re, have been erroneous. What he had just witnessed assured
him, in an unanswerable manner, that overt crimes or overt virtues were
merely the good or evil employment of one or other of the five senses;
that they were the bright and black spots upon the spiritual nature of
man, the _faculae_ and the _maculae_, as it were, on the disc of his
conscience. Satisfied, therefore, that the purity or depravity of every
mortal was merely the consequence of the different purpose to which
their senses had been directed, the Rosicrucian perceived the intimate
relationship subsisting between the immaterial being and the physical
organs. He perceived especially that those organs were the channels
through which that immaterial portion of humanity was brought into
communication with a material existence, was compelled to endure its
miseries, or was enabled to appreciate its enjoyments. In this he
recognised the veracity of that solemn assurance, that happiness is
accessible, even on this earth, to all who use their senses with a
virtuous discrimination. Nor had this consolatory truth been enforced
merely by a barren asseveration. Balsamo had been taught the inestimable
value of those senses, and the penalties of such as abused them by their
vices. Five incidents, most touching, or most appalling, had reminded
him of the exquisite pleasures derivable from created things, through
the eyes, through the nostrils, through the ears, through the palate,
and through the nerves. He had seen the anguish, moreover, of those who
suffered from the deprivation of either sense, or of those who were
tortured by the result of their own heinous misapplication. He had seen
this in the insanity of Tiberius, in the torments of Agrippa, in the
sadness of Milton, in the desolation of Mirabeau, and even in the
philosophic sorrows of Beethoven. The emperor, the tetrarch, the poet,
the demagogue, and the musician, crowded upon his memory, and appealed
to his judgment with the same melancholy distinctness. Still the
villainous predilections of the Rosicrucian contended for the mastery,
although his intellect recognised the wisdom of the Vision. A fierce
strife arose between his passions and his reason.

Suddenly his eyes opened to the splendour of an autumn morning; and as
the sunlight poured along the _Boulevard de la Madeleine_, as it gilded
every blade of grass in the paddock, and streamed in golden pencils
through the open window of the cottage, it glittered