ng Reason of mine, hangs
in the balance.

'_June 22_.--Just now he offered me a cup of wine. I almost dashed it
to the ground before him. But he looked steadfastly into my eye. I
flinched: and drank--drank.

'Years ago, when, as I remember, we were at Balbec, I saw him one day
make an almost tasteless preparation out of pure black nicotine, which
in mere wanton lust he afterwards gave to some of the dwellers by the
Caspian to drink. But the fiend would surely never dream of giving to
me that browse of hell--to me an aged man, and a thinker, a seer.

'_June 23_.--The mysterious, the unfathomable Ul-Jabal! Once again, as
I lay in heavy trance at midnight, has he invaded, calm and noiseless
as a spirit, the sanctity of my chamber. Serene on the swaying air,
which, radiant with soft beams of vermil and violet light, rocked me
into variant visions of heaven, I reclined and regarded him unmoved.
The man has replaced the valueless stone in the modern-made chalice,
and has now stolen the false stone from the other, which _he himself_
put there! In patience will I possess this my soul, and watch what
shall betide. My eyes shall know no slumber!

'_June 24_.--No more--no more shall I drink wine from the hand of
Ul-Jabal. My knees totter beneath the weight of my lean body. Daggers
of lambent fever race through my brain incessant. Some fibrillary
twitchings at the right angle of the mouth have also arrested my
attention.

'_June 25_.--He has dared at open mid-day to enter my room. I watched
him from an angle of the stairs pass along the corridor and open my
door. But for the terrifying, death-boding thump, thump of my heart, I
should have faced the traitor then, and told him that I knew all his
treachery. Did I say that I had strange fibrillary twitchings at the
right angle of my mouth, and a brain on fire? I have ceased to write my
book--the more the pity for the world, not for me.

'_June 26_.--Marvellous to tell, the traitor, Ul-Jabal, has now placed
_another_ stone in the Edmundsbury chalice--also identical in nearly
every respect with the original gem. This, then, was the object of his
entry into my room yesterday. So that he has first stolen the real
stone and replaced it by another; then he has stolen this other and
replaced it by yet another; he has beside stolen the valueless stone
from the modern chalice, and then replaced it. Surely a man gone rabid,
a man gone dancing, foaming, raving mad!

'_June 28_.--I have