’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, cunning 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!