LITMIR.BIZ

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this man to do; I had better invite him at once to England, and make him physician in ordinary to our family."

      "I have an engagement at nine," said the stranger; "have you any other inquiries to make?"

      "But, if you cured my father, Signor Marquis," I observed, "how is it that I have inherited the disease? Should not the cure have eradicated it for ever from him and his posterity?"

      "Is it not enough that I prevented the display of such a malady during his life? that I drove away the cloud that obscured his day, so that the sun of reason shone brightly on him until his death? What had I to do with future generations? with a race of men then unborn? I performed my contract, and he was satisfied. Shall the son be more difficult to please than the father?"

      I interrupted him, "Oh, mysterious man! canst thou not cure the root of this disease? stop its fatal progress? prevent the seed from partaking of the nature of the plant?"

      "Young man!" solemnly returned the marquis, "was not thy first progenitor, the man who resided in Paradise, mad– essentially mad? and has not his disease been carried on, in spite of all physicians, down, down to the present hour? It is woven into man's very nature; the warp and woof of which he is composed. I can check its open manifestation in a single individual; but the evil will only be dammed up during his time, to give it an increased impetus and power to those who follow him. Art thou not an instance of this fact? Hast thou not been madder than thy father?"

      I groaned aloud. I remembered my own wild delusions, my sudden bursts of passion. I even began to think that madness ruled me at that very hour; that all I saw and heard was the coinage of a distempered brain.

      At length I said, dejectedly, unknowing that I spoke aloud, "Then I must never marry; my children will become worse than myself. Farewell then – "

      "Or rather," interrupted the cloaked stranger, "farewell to human marriages altogether, if those who marry must be free from madness. Why, 'tis the very sign they are so, their wishing to rivet fetters on themselves; but, no matter. What have I to do with all the freaks and frenzied institutions of such a set of driveling idiots?"

      "Art thou not a man?"

      "Thou shalt judge for thyself, thou insect of an hour!" and he unclasped his cloak, and stood erect before me. Coiled around him like a large boa-constrictor, reaching to his very throat, – But I sicken as I write! The remembrance of that moment, how shall it be effaced? Time deadens thousands of recollections, but has never weakened the impression made upon me at that appalling moment!

      The immense mass that wound its lengthy fibres round him, like a cable of a ship, now became sensibly animated by life! I beheld it move, and writhe, and unfold itself! I heard its extremity drop upon the floor! I saw it extend itself, and creep along! More – more still descended; fewer coils were round him! He turned himself to facilitate its descent; and, when the enormous whole encircled him, still undulating on the ground, that being looked towards me with one of those smiles, that Satan might be supposed to use.

      "Behold!" said he, pointing to the dark undulation on the floor, "behold the reason why I wear a cloak!"

      Insensibility closed up my senses. I could behold no more. When I recovered, I was alone. The stranger had departed, leaving the door ajar; but he had written on a slip of paper, and placed it just before me, these words:

      "The remedy I bestowed upon the father, for his sake I will give unto the son. Three notches of the devil's tail will perfectly restore you; but it must be cut off by the hand of the purest person that you know on earth. It will grow again!!"

      I hastily caught up this paper on hearing the step of my attendant, and placed it in my bosom. I think he saw the action, for he looked mournfully on me, and shook his head. I told him I was ready to set off instantly for Rome: his simple answer was,

      "I wish we had remained there!"

      "And why, Hubert?"

      "You are pale as a sheeted corpse, and the boards of the floor are singed, yet there has been no fire in the room!"

      I looked where he pointed; and, in a serpentine form, I beheld the traces of that enormous tail I had seen fall from the body of the cloaked stranger, coiled round him as an immense serpent twines itself around a tree. I shuddered at the sight. I felt my brain working; yet I wrestled with the spirit of darkness within. I tried to persuade myself that I had been overtaken only by a dream; that my whole acquaintance with the pretended marquis was nothing but an illusion, a vision of the imagination, an optic delusion, an hallucination of an excited state of mind; but it would not do. There were the dark and calcined marks, which it was my duty to account for to my host, who cared very little how they were occasioned, so as he received an ample sum to have the boards removed, and others in their place.

      Our accounts were soon arranged, and I returned to my anxious family; but my disorder was increasing hourly. The wildest imaginations haunted and perplexed me. My beloved mother looked at me with tears swimming in her eyes. My eldest sister strove, by a hundred stratagems, to dispel the gloom that arose amongst us all. Emily sat, absorbed in her own melancholy thoughts, a fellow-sufferer, I fancied, with myself. My lovely, innocent, affectionate cousin held my fevered hand in one of hers, and imploringly asked me to be tranquil; said she would sing to me if I would try to sleep. I felt the gentle charm, and gave myself up to it. I laid myself upon the sofa; and she, whose name I cannot utter, sitting on a low stool by my side, sought to soothe me with her voice.

THE SONG OF –

      "Come from Heaven, soft balmy Sleep,

      Since thou art an angel there!

      Come, and watch around him keep —

      Watch that I with thee will share.

      Strew thy poppies o'er his head,

      Calm the fever of his mind;

      All thy healing virtues shed,

      That he may composure find!"

      "Oh, God!" I cried, jumping up; "and must I never call this angel mine? Better to die at once, or lose all consciousness of what a wretch I am!"

      "Hush, my dearest cousin! I have invoked an angel from the skies to visit you; drive her not away by ill-timed violence; here, let me hold your hand;" and she began again to murmur in a low tone, and so I fell asleep.

      "Strew thy poppies o'er his head,

      Calm the fever of his mind."

      When I awoke, my gentle cousin, (more constant than my heavenly visitant, Sleep,) was still seated by my side; all the rest were gone; candles burned on the table – it was midnight; I had slept for hours, she yet retained my hand. I looked at her, and burst into tears.

      "We are alone, Theodore," said my beloved; "tell me, I beseech you, what is labouring on your mind. You have spoken strange things during your sleep. You have declared that I had the power to restore you; can I do this? Theodore, be candid! Were it to cost my life, I would gladly lay it down to be of benefit to you."

      I could not answer her; but I clasped my arms round that pure, angelic form, and wept like an infant on her bosom.

      "Can I do you service, Theodore? You deny not what your lips murmured in sleep."

      "You can restore my reason, for you are the purest person that I know on earth."

      "By what means? But, alas! you are wandering still; this is one of your delusions! Would that it were in my power to heal thy mind, my dearest cousin."

      "In this, my heart's treasure, I am at least perfectly sane. You have the power to cure me."

      "Tell me the means."

      I related to – the whole of my adventures at Naples. I hid nothing from her excepting that our children might be infected with the same disease. Many reasons prevented my naming this. She was too delicate for me to allude to such a circumstance; I was willing to run all hazards of my posterity inheriting so dreadful a disease. My father had done as I intended to do; and the remedy was as open to my offspring as to myself, for had not the cloaked stranger told me that "the tail

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