My disease seemed to culminate that day, I remember. I was a sick invalid alone in the mist. Something--it might have been vitriol--was eating into me, eating, eating its way to my very heart, to the core of me. Oh, to be stunted and desire to be straight and tall, to be dwarf and wish to be giant, to be stupid and long to be a genius, to be ugly and yearn to be in face as one of the shining gods, to have no power over men, and to pine to fascinate, hold, dominate a world of men--this indeed is to be in hell! I was in hell that Autumn day. I clenched my thin, weak hands together. I clenched my teeth from which the pale lips were drawn back in a grin; and I realised all the spectral crowd of my shortcomings. They stood before me like demons of the Brocken--yes, yes, of the Brocken!--and I cursed God with the sound of the burn ringing and chattering in my ears. And I devoted Gavin, Doctor Wedderburn, every man highly placed, every lowest peasant, who could do even one of all the things I could not do, to damnation. The paroxysm that took hold of me was like a fit, a convulsion. I came out of it white and feeble. And, suddenly, the voice of the burn seemed to come from a long way off. I put out my hand, and took up from the rock on which I had laid it, "Faust." And, scarcely knowing what I did, I began mechanically to read--to the dim rapture of the burn-- "_Scene III.--The Study. Faust (entering, with the poodle)._" I began to read, do I say, mechanically? Yes, it is true, but soon, very soon, the spell of Goethe was laid upon me. I was in the lofty-arched, narrow Gothic chamber, with that living symbol of the weariness, broken ambition, learned despair of all the ages. I was engrossed. I heard the poodle snarling by the stove. I heard the spirits whispering in the corridor. Vapour rose--or was it indeed the mist from the mountains among the birch trees?--and out of the vapour came Mephistopheles in the garb of a travelling scholar. And then--and then the great bargain was struck. I heard--yes, I did, I actually, and most distinctly, heard a voice--Faust's--say, "_Let us the sensual deeps explore.... Plunge we in Time's tumultuous dance, In the rush and roll of circumstance._" A pause; then the Student's grave and astonished tones came to me: _Eritis sicut Deus, scientes bonum et malum._ The cloak was spread, and on the burning air Faust was wafted to his new life--nay, not to his new life merely, but to life itself. He vanished with his guide in a coloured, flower-like mist. I dropped my hand holding the book down upon the cold rock by which the cold water splashed. It felt burning hot to my touch. My head fell upon my breast, and I had my dreams--dreams of the life of Faust and of its glories, gained by this bargain that he made. And then--yes, then it was!--the voice of the burn, as from leagues away in the bosom of this very mist, began to sing like a fairy voice, or a voice in dreams, and in visions of the night, "_If it was so then, it