beings of whom you
speak, _cher ami_. They should know that during the Middle Ages
imagination peopled the four elements with intelligences, normally
unseen, some of which were friendly to man and others hostile. They were
thought to be powerful and conscious of their power, though at the same
time they were profoundly aware that they possessed no soul. Their life
depended upon the continuance of some natural object, and hence for them
there could be no immortality. They must return eventually to the abyss
of unending night, and the darkness of death afflicted them always. But
it was thought that in the same manner as man by his union with God had
won a spark of divinity, so might the sylphs, gnomes, undines, and
salamanders by an alliance with man partake of his immortality. And many
of their women, whose beauty was more than human, gained a human soul by
loving one of the race of men. But the reverse occurred also, and often a
love-sick youth lost his immortality because he left the haunts of his
kind to dwell with the fair, soulless denizens of the running streams or
of the forest airs.'

'I didn't know that you spoke figuratively,' said Arthur to Oliver Haddo.

The other shrugged his shoulders.

'What else is the world than a figure? Life itself is but a symbol. You
must be a wise man if you can tell us what is reality.'

'When you begin to talk of magic and mysticism I confess that I am out of
my depth.'

'Yet magic is no more than the art of employing consciously invisible
means to produce visible effects. Will, love, and imagination are magic
powers that everyone possesses; and whoever knows how to develop them to
their fullest extent is a magician. Magic has but one dogma, namely, that
the seen is the measure of the unseen.'

'Will you tell us what the powers are that the adept possesses?'

'They are enumerated in a Hebrew manuscript of the sixteenth century,
which is in my possession. The privileges of him who holds in his right
hand the Keys of Solomon and in his left the Branch of the Blossoming
Almond are twenty-one. He beholds God face to face without dying, and
converses intimately with the Seven Genii who command the celestial army.
He is superior to every affliction and to every fear. He reigns with all
heaven and is served by all hell. He holds the secret of the resurrection
of the dead, and the key of immortality.'

'If you possess even these you have evidently the most varied
attainments,' s