nothing is the foundation of all things. Cosmos is impenetrable. Why
then should we exist?'

"Astounded at this weighty query, and at the philosophic demeanour of
his visitor, our hero made shift to bid him welcome and to demand his
name and quality. As the old man answered him his voice rose and fell in
musical cadences, like the sighing of the east wind, while an ethereal
and aromatic vapour pervaded the apartment.

"'I am the eternal non-ego,' he answered. 'I am the concentrated
negative--the everlasting essence of nothing. You see in me that which
existed before the beginning of matter many years before the
commencement of time. I am the algebraic _x_ which represents the
infinite divisibility of a finite particle.'

"Sir Overbeck felt a shudder as though an ice-cold hand had been placed
upon his brow. 'What is your message?' he whispered, falling prostrate
before his mysterious visitor.

"'To tell you that the eternities beget chaos, and that the immensities
are at the mercy of the divine ananke. Infinitude crouches before a
personality. The mercurial essence is the prime mover in spirituality,
and the thinker is powerless before the pulsating inanity. The cosmical
procession is terminated only by the unknowable and unpronounceable'----

"May I ask, Mr. Smollett, what you find to laugh at?"

"Gadzooks, master," cried Smollett, who had been sniggering for some
time back. "It seems to me that there is little danger of any one
venturing to dispute that style with you."

"It's all your own," murmured Sir Walter.

"And very pretty, too," quoth Lawrence Sterne, with a malignant grin.
"Pray sir, what language do you call it?"

Lytton was so enraged at these remarks, and at the favour with which
they appeared to be received, that he endeavoured to stutter out some
reply, and then, losing control of himself completely, picked up all his
loose papers and strode out of the room, dropping pamphlets and speeches
at every step. This incident amused the company so much that they
laughed for several minutes without cessation. Gradually the sound of
their laughter sounded more and more harshly in my ears, the lights on
the table grew dim and the company more misty, until they and their
symposium vanished away altogether. I was sitting before the embers of
what had been a roaring fire, but was now little more than a heap of
grey ashes, and the merry laughter of the august company had changed to
the recriminations of my w