“Girl,” said the mystic, “the soul sleepeth not, nor wanteth sleep: even as the stars, to which (as the Arabian saith) there is also a soul, wherewith an intent passion of our own doth make a union--so that we, by an unslumbering diligence, do constitute ourselves a part of the heaven itself!--even, I say, as the stars may vanish from the human eye, nor be seen in the common day--though all the while their course is stopped not, nor their voices dumb--even so doth the soul of man retire, as it were, into a seeming sleep and torpor, yet it worketh all the same--and perhaps with a less impeded power, in that it is more free from common obstruction and trivial hindrance. And if I purpose to confer this night with the ‘Intelligence’ that ruleth earth and earth’s beings, concerning this stranger, it will not be by the vigil and the scheme, but by the very sleep which thou imaginest, in thy mental darkness, would deprive me of the resources of my art.” “Can you really, then, my father,” said Lucilla, in a tone half anxious, half timid,--“can you really, at will, conjure up in your dreams the persons you wish to see; or draw, from sleep, any oracle concerning their present state?” “Of a surety,” answered the astrologer; “it is one of the great--though not perchance the most gifted--of our endowments.” “Can you teach me the method?” asked Lucilla, gravely. “All that relates to the art I can,” rejoined the mystic: “but the chief and main power rests with thyself. For know, my daughter, that one who seeks the wisdom that is above the earth must cultivate and excite, with long labour and deep thought, his least earthly faculty.” Here the visionary, observing that the countenance of Lucilla was stamped with a fixed attention, which she did not often bestow upon his metaphysical exordiums; paused for a moment; and then pursued the theme with the tone of one desirous of making himself at once as clear and impressive as the nature of an abstruse science would allow.