“To the astonishment of every one, he had not been long consigned to his own guidance, when he was discovered in the library, reading every old treatise on astrology which he could lay his hands on. He had rejected all useful knowledge for the most obsolete of obsolete sciences—the old abandoned delusion of divination by the stars! My father laughed heartily over the strange study to which his idle son had at last applied himself, but made no attempt to oppose his new caprice, and sarcastically presented him with a telescope on his next birthday. I should remind you here, of what you may perhaps have forgotten, that my father was a philosopher of the Voltaire school, who believed that the summit of human wisdom was to arrive at the power of sneering at all enthusiasms, and doubting of all truths. Apart from his philosophy, he was a kind hearted, easy man, of quick rather than of profound intelligence. He could see nothing in my brother’s new occupation but the evidence of a new idleness; a fresh caprice, which would be abandoned in a few months. My father was not the man to appreciate those yearnings toward the poetical and the spiritual which were part of Alfred’s temperament, and which gave to his peculiar studies of the stars and their influences, a certain charm altogether unconnected with the more practical attractions of scientific investigation. “This idle caprice of my brother’s, as my father insisted on terming it, had lasted more than a twelve-month, when there occurred the first of a series of mysterious and—as I consider them—supernatural events, with all of which Alfred was very remarkably connected. I was myself a witness of the strange circumstance which I am now about to relate to you. “One day—my brother being then sixteen years of age—I happened to go into my father’s study during his absence, and found Alfred there, standing close to a window which looked into the garden. I walked up to him, and observed a curious expression of vacancy and rigidity in his face, especially in his eyes. Although I knew him to be subject to what are called fits of absence, I still thought it rather extraordinary that he never moved, and never noticed me when I was close to him. I took his hand, and asked if he was unwell. His flesh felt quite cold: neither my touch nor my voice produced the smallest sensation in him. Almost at the same moment, when I noticed this, I happened to be looking accidentally toward the garden. There was my father walking along one of the paths, and there by his side, walking with him, was _another Alfred_!—Another; yet exactly the same as the Alfred by whose side I was standing, whose hand I still held in mine!