“I shall hold you to your promise,” returned the old gentleman, “and when I am no more, you will receive the manuscripts.  From what you say of the prevailing taste in literature, I cannot flatter you with the hope that you will gain much by the undertaking.  And I tell you beforehand that you will find it not a little laborious.”

“Is your work a romance?”

“It is a romance, and it is not a romance.  It is a truth for those who can comprehend it, and an extravagance for those who cannot.”

At last there arrived the manuscripts, with a brief note from my deceased friend, reminding me of my imprudent promise.

With mournful interest, and yet with eager impatience, I opened the packet and trimmed my lamp.  Conceive my dismay when I found the whole written in an unintelligible cipher.  I present the reader with a specimen: 

(Several strange characters.)

and so on for nine hundred and forty mortal pages in foolscap.  I could scarcely believe my eyes:  in fact, I began to think the lamp burned singularly blue; and sundry misgivings as to the unhallowed nature of the characters I had so unwittingly opened upon, coupled with the strange hints and mystical language of the old gentleman, crept through my disordered imagination.  Certainly, to say no worse of it, the whole thing looked uncanny!  I was about, precipitately, to hurry the papers into my desk, with a pious determination to have nothing more to do with them, when my eye fell upon a book, neatly bound in blue morocco, and which, in my eagerness, I had hitherto overlooked.  I opened this volume with great precaution, not knowing what might jump out, and—­guess my delight—­found that it contained a key or dictionary to the hieroglyphics.  Not to weary the reader with an account of my labours, I am contented with saying that at last I imagined myself capable of construing the characters, and set to work in good earnest.  Still it was no easy task, and two years elapsed before I had made much progress.  I then, by way of experiment on the public, obtained the insertion of a few desultory chapters, in a periodical with which, for a few months, I had the honour to be connected.  They appeared to excite more curiosity than I had presumed to anticipate; and I renewed, with better heart, my laborious undertaking.  But now a new misfortune befell me:  I found, as I proceeded, that the author had made two copies of his work, one much more elaborate and detailed than the other; I had stumbled upon the earlier copy, and had my whole task to remodel, and the chapters I had written to retranslate.  I may say then, that, exclusive of intervals devoted to more pressing occupations, my unlucky promise cost me the toil of several years before I could bring it to adequate fulfilment.  The task was the more difficult, since the style in the original is written in a kind of rhythmical prose, as if the author desired that in some degree his work