I would say more of my seances and all the recollections they evoke, were I not impatient to get back to du Maurier and to Malines.  Once on the experiences of those days, I have much to relate—­pros and cons, if you please, for that subtle magnetic fluid, which, without physical contact, one human being can transmit to another, is a ticklish one to handle.  I cannot pack my pen, though, and take train of thought to the Belgian city without mentioning my friend Allonge, the well-known French artist, then a fellow-student of mine at the Ecole des Beaux Arts.  A chance contact of our knees as we sat closely packed with some sixty other students put me on the track of a new subject, perhaps the most interesting one it was ever my good fortune to come across.  But of him another time.

Using the privilege of a mesmerist, I elect to will the reader—­that is, if natural slumber has not ere this put him beyond my control—­across the frontier, into the back parlour of Mrs. L.’s tobacco store.  There I am operating on a boy—­such a stupid little Flemish boy that no amount of fluid could ever make him clever.  How I came to treat him to passes I don’t remember; probably I used him as an object-lesson to amuse Carry.  All I recollect is that I gave him a key to hold, and made him believe that it was red-hot and burnt his fingers, or that it was a piece of pudding to be eaten presently, thereby making him howl and grin alternately.

In the middle of our seance Carry is called away by a customer, one of the swells of Malines much addicted to a poetical expression of his admiration for the fair sex in general and for Carry in particular.  Greatly to our edification, she was pleased to improve the occasion by leading him on, within our hearing, to make what is commonly called a fool of himself.  The pleasant incident is recorded in the accompanying sketch.

But mesmerism meant more than incidental amusement or even scientific experiment to us in those Antwerp and Malines days.  When one stands on the threshold of a world of mysteries one cannot but long to bridge over the chasm that separates one from the gods, the fairies, or the fiends.  To be sure, we should have been glad if we could have got “light, more light” thrown on our steps, but, failing that, we tried to find our way as best we could in the mist.  We loved that never-attainable Will-o’-the-Wisp, “Truth,” for its own dear Bohemian sake; so, guided by Fancy and Fantasy, we made frequent inroads into the boundless land where unknown forces pick up our poor dear little conception of the Impossible, and use it as the starting-point of never-to-be-exhausted possibilities.

[Illustration:  A MESMERIC SEANCE IN MRS. L.’S BACK PARLOUR.]

Such a land was particularly well suited to the state of our outward-bound minds and our excelsior appetites.  It was on one or the other of these excursions, I feel confident, that du Maurier was inoculated with the germs that were eventually to develop into Trilbyism and Svengalism.  No wonder, then, if in more than one of his letters and sketches the future delineator of those characters embodies bold dreams and fancies, or if on one occasion he depicts himself, with fixed gaze and hair erect, sitting bolt upright on my hospitable sofa, thrilled and overawed by the midnight presence of the uncanny, which I had evoked for his benefit.