IN A GLASS DARKLY. BY J. SHERIDAN LE FANU, AUTHOR OF "UNCLE SILAS", &C. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. II. LONDON: R. BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. 1872. In a Glass Darkly. THE ROOM IN THE DRAGON VOLANT. VOL. II. PROLOGUE. The curious case which I am about to place before you, is referred to, very pointedly, and more than once, in the extraordinary Essay upon the drugs of the Dark and the Middle Ages, from the pen of Doctor Hesselius. This Essay he entitles "Mortis Imago," and he, therein, discusses the _Vinum letiferum_, the _Beatifica_, the _Somnus Angelorum_, the _Hypnus Sagarum_, the _Aqua Thessalliæ_, and about twenty other infusions and distillations, well known to the sages of eight hundred years ago, and two of which are still, he alleges, known to the fraternity of thieves, and, among them, as police-office inquiries sometimes disclose to this day, in practical use. The Essay, _Mortis Imago_, will occupy as nearly as I can, at present, calculate, two volumes, the ninth and tenth, of the collected papers of Doctor Martin Hesselius. This Essay, I may remark, in conclusion, is very curiously enriched by citations, in great abundance, from mediæval verse and prose romance, some of the most valuable of which, strange to say, are Egyptian. I have selected this particular statement from among many cases equally striking, but hardly, I think, so effective as mere narratives, in this irregular form of publication, it is simply as a story that I present it. CHAPTER I. ON THE ROAD. In the eventful year, 1815, I was exactly three-and-twenty, and had just succeeded to a very large sum in consols, and other securities. The first fall of Napoleon had thrown the continent open to English excursionists, anxious, let us suppose, to improve their minds by foreign travel; and I--the slight check of the 'hundred days' removed, by the genius of Wellington, on the field of Waterloo--was now added to the philosophic throng. I was posting up to Paris from Bruxelles, following, I presume, the route that the allied army had pursued but a few weeks before--more carriages than you could believe were pursuing the same line. You could not look back or forward, without seeing into far perspective the clouds of dust which marked the line of the long series of vehicles. We were, perpetually, passing relays of return-horses, on their way, jaded and dusty, to the inns from which they had been taken. They were arduous times for those patient public servants. The whole world seemed posting up to Paris.