ble
only to the terrible power of certain gases in the physical world,
beings who combine with other beings, penetrate them as active agents,
and produce upon them witchcrafts, charms, against which these helpless
slaves are wholly defenceless; they are, in fact, enchanted, brought
under subjection, reduced to a condition of dreadful vassalage. Such
mysterious beings overpower others with the sceptre and the glory of
a superior nature,--acting upon them at times like the torpedo which
electrifies or paralyzes the fisherman, at other times like a dose of
phosphorous which stimulates life and accelerates its propulsion; or
again, like opium, which puts to sleep corporeal nature, disengages the
spirit from every bond, enables it to float above the world and shows
this earth to the spiritual eye as through a prism, extracting from it
the food most needed; or, yet again, like catalepsy, which deadens
all faculties for the sake of one only vision. Miracles, enchantments,
incantations, witchcrafts, spells, and charms, in short, all those
acts improperly termed supernatural, are only possible and can only be
explained by the despotism with which some spirit compels us to feel the
effects of a mysterious optic which increases, or diminishes, or exalts
creation, moves within us as it pleases, deforms or embellishes all
things to our eyes, tears us from heaven, or drags us to hell,--two
terms by which men agree to express the two extremes of joy and misery.

"These phenomena are within us, not without us," Wilfrid went on. "The
being whom we call Seraphita seems to me one of those rare and terrible
spirits to whom power is given to bind men, to crush nature, to enter
into participation of the occult power of God. The course of her
enchantments over me began on that first day, when silence as to her
was imposed upon me against my will. Each time that I have wished to
question you it seemed as though I were about to reveal a secret of
which I ought to be the incorruptible guardian. Whenever I have tried
to speak, a burning seal has been laid upon my lips, and I myself have
become the involuntary minister of these mysteries. You see me here
to-night, for the hundredth time, bruised, defeated, broken, after
leaving the hallucinating sphere which surrounds that young girl, so
gentle, so fragile to both of you, but to me the cruellest of magicians!
Yes, to me she is like a sorcerer holding in her right hand the
invisible wand that moves