It was dark and very chilly. I gazed around me for a moment and shuddered when I discovered at my side, my eyes being now accustomed to the light, the form of an old man, bald-headed, and with snowy locks and beard. His brow was high and his eye clear and beaming with wisdom and benevolence. His form was upright and his step firm, and he wore a tunic with ample folds and of a sad colour. At first I started and looked at him wonderingly, as if to ask him who he was. He answered to my thoughts affably. "I am your guide. You have courted our intimacy, and sought to become our equal. Come with me, and I will initiate you into our mysteries and show you the lot for which you have so long been striving." There was something so inviting in the old man's manner, something so charming in the calm and dignified look that superior intellect invariably gives, that I could not but comply, and following my guide, I was conducted through long labyrinths of arches in silence, until I reached the centre of the cavern, when I found myself in a vast hall formed by nature, or roughly hewn out of the natural rock, and illuminated by torches. Here I saw a number of tables, and at each table sat one man. They appeared to be all engaged in chemistry, for each man had before him his crucibles and other instruments. So absorbed did they all seem in their work that not one of them noticed our entrance, although we were talking loud enough for all to hear and our voices re-echoed through the cavern. I tried to catch the eye of some of them in order to salute them, and perhaps to enter into conversation with them, but no one looked up. I felt somewhat chilled at this reception, as it seemed to me that they must have heard us, and purposely avoided looking up. My guide, who could read all that was passing in my mind, responded to my thoughts. "Be not grieved at their apparent want of civility, for they do not even see you. These spirits see nothing and hear nothing but what is immediately before them and connected with their pursuits. All you see here are alchemists. In your terrestrial globe their sole delight was in the endeavour to make gold. To this end they voluntarily imprisoned their spirits in one channel in order to concentrate the force of their intellects towards the object of their pursuit. "The development of their intellects alone at the expense of everything else that is human, was their desire in the world; their intellects alone, therefore, after death remain engrossed in their one pursuit to all eternity, and they are both deaf and blind to all else." "And will this be my lot?" I asked of my guide. "That depends upon yourself," was the reply. "Your spirit is not so entirely separated from your body as to make your doom irrevocable. In whatever state you quit the world of the body, in that state the spirit remains to eternity. If the state of these spirits pleases you not, there is time to set your affections on another.