lady; but, being affected with some slight disorder, she had
swallowed one of her lover's prescriptions, and died on the bridal
evening. The greatest curiosity of the study remains to be mentioned; it
was a ponderous folio volume, bound in black leather, with massive
silver clasps. There were no letters on the back, and nobody could tell
the title of the book. But it was well known to be a book of magic; and
once, when a chambermaid had lifted it, merely to brush away the dust,
the skeleton had rattled in its closet, the picture of the young lady
had stepped one foot upon the floor, and several ghastly faces had
peeped forth from the mirror; while the brazen head of Hippocrates
frowned, and said--"Forbear!"

Such was Dr. Heidegger's study. On the summer afternoon of our tale, a
small round table, as black as ebony, stood in the center of the room
sustaining a cut-glass vase of beautiful form and elaborate workmanship.
The sunshine came through the window, between the heavy festoons of two
faded damask curtains, and fell directly across this vase, so that a
mild splendor was reflected from it on the ashen visages of the five old
people who sat around. Four champagne glasses were also on the table.

"My dear old friends," repeated Dr. Heidegger, "may I reckon on your aid
in performing an exceedingly curious experiment?"

Now Dr. Heidegger was a very strange old gentleman, whose eccentricity
had become the nucleus for a thousand fantastic stories. Some of these
fables, to my shame be it spoken, might possibly be traced back to mine
own veracious self; and if any passage of the present tale should
startle the reader's faith, I must be content to bear the stigma of a
fiction monger.

When the doctor's four guests heard him talk of his proposed experiment,
they anticipated nothing more wonderful than the murder of a mouse in an
air pump, or the examination of a cobweb by the microscope, or some
similar nonsense, with which he was constantly in the habit of pestering
his intimates. But without waiting for a reply, Dr. Heidegger hobbled
across the chamber, and returned with the same ponderous folio, bound in
black leather, which common report affirmed to be a book of magic.
Undoing the silver clasps, he opened the volume, and took from among its
black-letter pages a rose, or what was once a rose, though now the
green leaves and crimson petals had assumed one brownish hue, and the
ancient flower seemed ready to crumble to dus