ngly enough, to enter the lists
with me, it has never taken the trouble to punish me for my presumption
and irreverence. But Cyprian's story suggests another consideration.
Ghost stories may often be mere chimeras; but, whatever may have been
at the bottom of Adelgunda's phantom, and the hovering plate, thus
much is certain, that, on that evening, in the family of Colonel Von
P---- there happened something which produced, in three of the persons
present, such a shock to the system that the result was the death of
one and the insanity of another; if we do not ascribe, at least
indirectly, the colonel's death to it too. For I happen to remember
that I heard from officers who were on the spot, that he suddenly
dashed into the thick of the enemy's fire as if impelled by the furies.
Then the incident of the plate differs so completely from anything in
the ordinary _mise en scene_ of supernatural stories. The hour when it
happened is so remote from ordinary supernatural use and wont, and the
thing so simple, that it is exactly in the very probability which the
improbability of it thereby acquires that the gruesomeness of it lies
for me. But if one were to assume that Adelgunda's imagination carried
away, by its influence, those of her father, mother and sister--that it
was only within her brain that the plate moved about--would not this
vision of the imagination striking three people dead in a moment, like
a shock of electricity, be the most terrible supernatural event
imaginable?"

"Certainly," said Theodore, "and I share with you, Ottmar, your opinion
that the very horror of the incident lies in its utter simpleness. I
can imagine myself enduring, fairly well, the sudden alarm produced by
some fearful apparition; but the weird actions of some invisible thing
would infallibly drive me mad. The sense of the most utter, most
helpless powerlessness must grind the spirit to dust. I remember that I
could scarce resist the profound terror which made me afraid to sleep
in my room alone, like a silly child, when I once read of an old
musician who was haunted in a terrible manner for a long time (almost
driving him out of his mind) by an invisible being which used to play
on his piano in the night, compositions of the most extraordinary kind,
with the power and the technique of the most accomplished master. He
heard every note, saw the keys going up and down, but never any form of
a player."

"Really," Cyprian said, "the way in whi