Magistus came every day to enjoy with secret satisfaction the cruel death he was inflicting on me. I regarded him with such repugnance and scorn, that I did not speak to him or even look at him. This no doubt inflamed his hatred. I walked about my narrow prison, whistling or talking to myself until he went away. My insulting indifference did not seem to disturb him in the least. He did nothing to attract my attention. He only looked. And now a strange and almost incredible thing occurred. I do not believe any one can comprehend what I have to say, unless he has been shut up alone in the dark for weeks and months; with the mind preying morbidly on itself for want of external objects to give it healthful activity; wasted by low diet and a mephitic atmosphere, by silence whose terror is indescribable, and by solitude which of itself can drive to madness. I did not look at the stony, cruel face of Magistus; but the idea that he was looking at me began to take a singular and painful possession of my mind. I could not get rid of it. I walked, whistled, talked, sang to myself, all in vain. The idea that a hideous face was in the window; that the black, fierce eyes were fixed upon me; that I could not prevent it; hung over my mind like the vultures gnawing at the heart of the chained Prometheus. It became a positive torture. An irresistible desire to look him full in the face seized me. Whether it was a secret magnetic attraction compelling me to do so, or whether I thought it might mitigate my painful and absurd tension of thought on the subject, I yielded at last. From that moment his triumph was complete. It was veritably the fascination of the bird by the serpent. I could not help gazing at him. He seemed to absorb my whole nervous life, to suck out the very spirit of my blood, so that I was left breathless, dizzy, bewildered, helpless, after each of his terrible visitations. Thus I lived a daily death for many weeks; ignorant of all things without; never hearing the sound of a human voice; buried alive; until hope died in my bosom, and despair became my bedfellow, and fear my familiar, and even memory ceased to weave her beautiful airy tissues, consoling me for the loss of a future by her glorification of the past. At first I used to love to review all the incidents of my life, both on earth and in the world of spirits. I spent my long and lonesome leisure in organizing my knowledge, analyzing my experiences, and building up from them a grand philosophy of mind and matter.