ntemplation and
detachment from the external world. This distracted the attention of
the two young gentlemen from the young ladies, just as they were
beginning to be extremely interesting. One of them had got the length
of stating that the hair of the officer (whom she had got _en rapport_
with) was emitting a strange and beautiful light; the other announced
that the general's lady, who occupied the floor below, was at that
moment drinking very fine caravan tea, the aroma of which she could
scent through the floor, and, moreover, she prophesied,
clairvoyantically, that she would wake from her mesmeric sleep in a
quarter of an hour, and drink some tea herself, and also eat some
tea-cake into the bargain. But the lady in the High Condition began to
speak again, in an altogether altered voice, which had a strange, and,
as I must admit, remarkably beautiful tone. What she said, moreover,
was couched in such mystic phraseology, and extraordinary expressions,
that I could make no sense of it. But the mesmerizer told us she was
saying the most glorious, the most profound, and the most instructive
things on the subject of her own stomach. This, of course, I had to
take for granted. Quitting the theme of her stomach (to rely again upon
her mesmerizer's interpretation), she soared away upon a loftier
flight. Sometimes it seemed to me that there occurred whole passages
which I had read somewhere or other; I had an idea that I had met with
them in Novalis's 'Fragments,' perhaps, or in Schelling's 'Weltseele.'
And then she fell back rigid upon her cushions. Her mesmerizer expected
her to awake directly, and begged us to go away, because it might have
a painful effect upon her if she found strangers about her when she
awoke. So we were sent about our business. The two young ladies, about
whom nobody had given themselves any further trouble, had thought it as
well to wake up some little time before, and slip quietly away.

"You cannot imagine the odd impression this whole scene had produced
upon me. To say nothing of the two silly girls--who, of course, would
have been only too happy to emerge from their uninteresting position as
mere spectators--I could not drive away the idea that the lady on the
sofa was playing--with very considerable talent and ability--a
thoroughly studied, well got-up, carefully rehearsed part. I was
perfectly certain that the mesmerist was the most sincere and
honourable of human beings, and would have abhorre