failed.  The incubus of the universe blackened down upon my brain.  How I tugged at the mandrakes of speech! was a locked pugilist with language!  In the depth of my extremity the half-thought, I remember, floated, like a mist, through my fading consciousness, that now perhaps—­now—­there was silence around me; that now, could my palsied lips find dialect, I should be heard, and understood.  My whole soul rose focussed to the effort—­my body jerked itself upwards.  At that moment I knew my spirit truly great, genuinely sublime.  For I did utter something—­my dead and shuddering tongue did babble forth some coherency.  Then I fell back, and all was once more the ancient Dark.  On the next day when I woke, I was lying on my back in my little boat, placed there by God knows whose hands.  At all events, one thing was clear—­I had uttered something—­I was saved.  With what of strength remained to me I reached the place where I had left your caleche, and started on my homeward way.  The necessity to sleep was strong upon me, for the fumes of the anaesthetic still clung about my brain; hence, after my long journey, I fainted on my passage through the house, and in this condition you found me.

’Such then is the history of my thinkings and doings in connection with this ill-advised confraternity:  and now that their cabala is known to others—­to how many others they cannot guess—­I think it is not unlikely that we shall hear little more of the Society of Sparta.’

THE END