Hamar obeyed, and after sitting for exactly three minutes with his pencil between his fingers, he felt a cold, pulpy hand laid over his, impelling him to write with lightning-like rapidity.  The script read as follows:—­

“To Hamar, Curtis and Kelson—­to the three of you in common—­is given the knowledge of inflicting all manner of torments and diseases, of imparting all kinds of injurious properties, and of causing plagues.

“In the first place, you must understand that the essence of life, comprising the psychical, psychological and physical, permeates every part of the living corporeal body—­and that any limb, or fragment of skin or flesh, cut off from the living corporeal body, retains the essence of life, comprising the psychical and physical in its full vigour and entirety.  Consequently, if a person have grafted on to them a piece of skin or flesh, or be inoculated with the blood or veins of a tiger—­then that person not merely becomes liable to all the physical infirmities of the tiger, but may—­if the counteracting influences are not sufficiently strong—­partake of all the tiger’s psychological characteristics.

“Thus, if you give a person, in whom there is a latent tendency to drink, a drop of a drunkard’s blood—­in a glass of wine, or sweet, or pill, no matter what—­that person will at once take to drink.  Thus—­mark you—­people can be metamorphosed into libertines, suicides, idiots and murderers.  This metamorphosis can also be produced by means of a magnet called the ‘magnes microcosmi,’ which is prepared from substances that have had a long association with the human body, and are penetrated by its vitality.  Such substances are the hair and blood.  Take either one of them, and dry it in a shady and moderately warm place, until it has lost its humidity and odour.  By this process it will have lost, too, all its mumia—­that is to say, its essence of life—­and is hungry to regain it.  It is now a magnes microcosmi, or a magnet for attracting diseases and properties, and if it be placed in close contact with a criminal or lunatic, it will be filled with his essence of life, and may then be used as a means of infecting other people with his pernicious qualities.  Bury it under the doorstep of the person you wish infected, or hide it in his house, or mix it well with earth, and plant a shrub in the earth, and the vitality the magnet took from the criminal or lunatic will pass into the plant; and if the plant, or even flower of the plant, be given to any one, that person—­unless she or he be a person absolutely free from the germs of vice—­will be attracted to it, and greatly affected by it.

“Or again, the earth over the grave of a lunatic or criminal will contain his essence of life, i.e. his vitality, which impregnates everything around it, and if that earth be placed somewhere in the immediate presence of a person, in whom there are latent tendencies to vice—­then that person will be affected by it.