Is it permitted me to tell that from first to last?"

The Inquisitor's head bent, and Henri Lothiere spoke, his voice gaining
in strength and fervor as he continued.

* * * * *

"Sire, I, Henri Lothiere, am no sorcerer but a simple apothecary's
assistant. It was always my nature, from earliest youth, to desire to
delve into matters unknown to men; the secrets of the earth and sea and
sky, the knowledge hidden from us. I knew well that this was wicked,
that the Church teaches all we need to know and that heaven frowns when
we pry into its mysteries, but so strong was my desire to know, that
many times I concerned myself with matters forbidden.

"I had sought to know the nature of the lightning, and the manner of
flight of the birds, and the way in which fishes are able to live
beneath the waters, and the mystery of the stars. So when these
thunderclaps began to be heard in the part of Paris in which I lived, I
did not fear them so much as my neighbors. I was eager to learn only
what was causing them, for it seemed to me that their cause might be
learned.

"So I began to go to that field from which they issued, to study them. I
waited in it and twice I heard the great thunderclaps myself. I thought
they came from near the field's center, and I studied that place. But I
could see nothing there that was causing them. I dug in the ground, I
looked up for hours into the sky, but there was nothing. And still, at
intervals, the thunderclaps sounded.

"I still kept going to the field, though I knew that many of my
neighbors whispered that I was engaged in sorcery. Upon that morning of
the third day of June, it had occurred to me to take certain
instruments, such as loadstones, to the field, to see whether anything
might be learned with them. I went, a few superstitious ones following
me at a distance. I reached the field's center, and started the
examinations I had planned. Then came suddenly another thunderclap and
with it I passed from the sight of those who had followed and were
watching, vanished from view.

"Sire, I cannot well describe what happened in that moment. I heard the
thunderclap come as though from all the air around me, stunning my ears
with its terrible burst of sound. And at the same moment that I heard
it, I was buffeted as though by awful winds and seemed falling downward
through terrific depths. Then through the hellish uproar, I felt myself
bumping upon a hard surfac