id than ever. Oh, fair goddess of Reason, desert not me, thy
chosen child!

'_June 18_.--Ul-Jabal?--that man is _the very Devil incarnate!_

'_June 19_.--So much for my bounty, all my munificence, to this
poisonous worm. I picked him up on the heights of the Mountain of
Lebanon, a cultured savage among cultured savages, and brought him here
to be a prince of thought by my side. What though his plundered
wealth--the debt I owe him--has saved me from a sort of ruin? Have not
_I_ instructed him in the sweet secret of Reason?

'I lay back on my bed in the lonely morning watches, my soul heavy as
with the distilled essence of opiates, and in vivid vision knew that he
had entered my apartment. In the twilight gloom his glittering rows of
shark's teeth seemed impacted on my eyeball--I saw _them_, and nothing
else. I was not aware when he vanished from the room. But at daybreak I
crawled on hands and knees to the cabinet containing the chalice. The
viperous murderer! He has stolen my gem, well knowing that with it he
has stolen my life. The stone is gone--gone, my precious gem. A
weakness overtook me, and I lay for many dreamless hours naked on the
marble floor.

'Does the fool think to hide ought from my eyes? Can he imagine that I
shall not recover my precious gem, my stone of Saul?

'_June 20_.--Ah, Ul-Jabal--my brave, my noble Son of the Prophet of
God! He has replaced the stone! He would not slay an aged man. The
yellow ray of his eye, it is but the gleam of the great thinker,
not--not--the gleam of the assassin. Again, as I lay in
semi-somnolence, I saw him enter my room, this time more distinctly. He
went up to the cabinet. Shaking the chalice in the dawning, some hours
after he had left, I heard with delight the rattle of the stone. I
might have known he would replace it; I should not have doubted his
clemency to a poor man like me. But the strange being!--he has taken
the _other_ stone from the _other_ cup--a thing of little value to any
man! Is Ul-Jabal mad or I?

'_June 21_.--Merciful Lord in Heaven! he has _not_ replaced it--not
_it_--but another instead of it. To-day I actually opened the chalice,
and saw. He has put a stone there, the same in size, in cut, in
engraving, but different in colour, in quality, in value--a stone I
have never seen before. How has he obtained it--whence? I must brace
myself to probe, to watch; I must turn myself into an eye to search
this devil's-bosom. My life, this subtle, cunni