“Calling a _voiture de remise_, I entered it and rode home to my hotel. Arrived there, I dismounted beneath the glare of a street lamp, and drew forth my pocket-book to pay my fare. On opening it, what was my surprise at finding a letter, closely sealed, within it, directed to myself. I paid the coachman, hastened to my chamber, and then, eagerly tearing the envelope, I read the following very singular letter, written in a female hand, and in the English language: “‘MONSIEUR, “‘Remember that you have met one human soul who knows and _thoroughly_ understands your strange, mysterious and inexplicable nature--your heaven’s heights, your hell’s depths, your spacic breadth, your volcanic eruptions, your ocean of god-like calmness, and all-pervading, all-sustaining, holy stillness and quiet, wherein the soul in its magnificent grandeur sweeps over all space and all time, and lives an infinity of lives in its own self-created world! As such I see and know you. Yet in all this I see still other and a greater character to arise in your being than now exists there; I see a character is to arise, if you will allow the grander, diviner elements of your being, and also the heavenly elements that surround you, to blend into one united force of harmonic intelligence, that will mould your _entire self_ into a man such as I cannot now describe. Two ways, my friend, are now before you. One so grand, so sublime, that I would (in order to explain it) demand the eloquence of a Patrick Henry, the strength of a Cæsar, the love of a _greater_ still, the wisdom of a god; the other, not all these combined could give me power to depict. “‘In the name of _Him_ and humanity, choose the right. “‘Such are the feelings of one who knows you. “‘Listen--be quiet! your time is precious. “‘Adieu!’ “This was Greek, Hebrew, Sanscrit, all combined, to me; and it continued so for a long, long time. It was evidently written by some one who, while fully aware of one of my weaknesses--a susceptibility to flattery--yet knew not the man himself. Still, the allusions to my awful secret were too palpable to admit a doubt that the writer knew far more than that strange letter said or hinted at. Was it the mysterious Count? If so, why did he take so great an interest in a stranger? I could not understand it. “Of course I thought much of the Italian Count, and ardently longed to know more of, if I did not join, the mystic Fraternity whereof he was a member; but to no human being had I ever opened my mind upon the subject, either in Paris, or Naples, whither I repaired on my way to the Orient. Indeed, in the latter city the subject lay _perdu_ in the cellars of my mind, for I sought to banish all care while in Italy, in order to drink full draughts of music--that balm for fevered souls.