I knew that a package had been placed upon the table at my side.

“If you can so far command the fragmentary life you lead as to give this manuscript the sober, searching thought which it invites, the truth may be brought to you.  But if these twenty years have only filled you with the pride of inventing arguments and detecting analogies, if they have only given you the petty skill of a petty scholar, why then dally on with a tinsel variety of superficial attainments, and give others the blessed privilege you are not strong enough to accept.”

“Take it from me,” I said.  “It has haunted me too long.  What you may have found, it is for your honor to promulgate.”

“The finding is enough for one life,” replied Vannelle.  “The spiritual manhood is indeed complete, but the shell which enclosed it totters towards earth.  My responsibility in this matter is at an end:  yours will now begin.”

A tremor ran through my frame as he spoke these words.  A mystery rigid as Fate seemed to shackle me.  Without seeing him go, I knew that Vannelle had left the room.  Again was I conscious of the carriage-rumble growing fainter, fainter, fainter in the distance.  A dream of passionate excitement, a phantasmagoria of old wishes, old hopes, of the life I might have led, flew before me.  For a moment the energy of Vannelle seemed to have transfused itself through every fibre.  An unquenchable thirst that I had never summoned struck into my brain.  I seized the manuscript, and devoured page after page.  Then I felt the approaches of a supreme despotism that might annihilate all I had been, all I hoped to be,—­that might compel me to denounce all that I had taught, to hear all that was respectable and healthy in the world jeer at me as an impostor, an enthusiast, a madman.  It was not that I was simply invited to come above the ordinary doctrines of the day, and stand supported and encouraged by a few advanced minds; but I was called to place myself where the most earnest souls—­unless a second birth could be granted them—­would scoff with the ignorance and intolerance of the mass.

At last the gray light of morning shone upon me.

One of my deacons, whistling sturdily, passed along the street.  A physical emanation from his healthy vitality partially counteracted the influence of the night.  Gathering up every muscle of my feeble will, I closed the manuscript forever.  Hereditary imperfections of body and mind confine me to a sphere of reputable usefulness.  If I have sinned in the past, I have also suffered.  If, as I sometimes suspect, I have thrust from me the grandest opportunity ever offered to man, the loss through all eternity will be mine.

In eight days I heard of the death of Herbert Vannelle.

III.