the gas-lamp,
surrounded by its moderators, burning when I went to bed the night
before. I found the sylph bathing, as it were, with an expression of
pleasure animating her features, in the brilliant light which
surrounded her. She tossed her lustrous golden hair over her shoulders
with innocent coquetry. She lay at full length in the transparent
medium, in which she supported herself with ease, and gambolled with
the enchanting grace that the nymph Salmacis might have exhibited when
she sought to conquer the modest Hermaphroditus. I tried an experiment
to satisfy myself if her powers of reflection were developed. I
lessened the lamplight considerably. By the dim light that remained, I
could see an expression of pain flit across her face. She looked upward
suddenly, and her brows contracted. I flooded the stage of the
microscope again with a full stream of light, and her whole expression
changed. She sprang forward like some substance deprived of all weight.
Her eyes sparkled and her lips moved. Ah! if science had only the means
of conducting and reduplicating sounds, as it does the rays of light,
what carols of happiness would then have entranced my ears! what
jubilant hymns to Adonais would have thrilled the illumined air!

I now comprehended how it was that the Count de Gabalis peopled his
mystic world with sylphs,--beautiful beings whose breath of life was
lambent fire, and who sported forever in regions of purest ether and
purest light. The Rosicrucian had anticipated the wonder that I had
practically realized.

How long this worship of my strange divinity went on thus I scarcely
know. I lost all note of time. All day from early dawn, and far into
the night, I was to be found peering through that wonderful lens. I saw
no one, went nowhere, and scarce allowed myself sufficient time for my
meals. My whole life was absorbed in contemplation as rapt as that of
any of the Romish saints. Every hour that I gazed upon the divine form
strengthened my passion,--a passion that was always overshadowed by the
maddening conviction that, although I could gaze on her at will, she
never, never could behold me!

At length I grew so pale and emaciated from want of rest and continual
brooding over my insane love and its cruel conditions that I determined
to make some effort to wean myself from it. "Come," I said, "this is at
best but a fantasy. Your imagination has bestowed on Animula charms
which in reality she does not possess. S