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Updated: June 22, 2025
Two years before me in college was the class of 18 . Upon the roll of its fifty-two members stood the name of Herbert Vannelle. Rich, an orphan, inclined to thought and study beyond the limited academic range of those days, endowed with personal fascinations of a very rare and peculiar kind, there seemed only one possible shadow to darken his career.
What you may have found, it is for your honor to promulgate." "The finding is enough for one life," replied Vannelle. "The spiritual manhood is indeed complete, but the shell which enclosed it totters towards earth. My responsibility in this matter is at an end: yours will now begin." A tremor ran through my frame as he spoke these words. A mystery rigid as Fate seemed to shackle me.
Ever was I controlled by a shadowy force which reached me from his abundant power. No occupation was so absorbing as to protect me from the invading presence of Herbert Vannelle. The first Sunday of the present month brought the twentieth anniversary of the day that I parted from Vannelle.
Vannelle spent two years in Germany, and returned to America about the time that my college-course was finished. The little I knew of him during his absence was from the scattered notices of newspaper-correspondents, who intimated that Herbert possessed the privilege of friendly intercourse with men most distinguished for knowledge in the Old World.
At the library I often encountered Vannelle in search of some volume of which I had just possessed myself. This led to an acquaintance. I was soon fascinated by a power which streamed from his large, expressive eyes, and persuaded by a voice modulated in a pathos and sweetness that I have heard in no other person.
At times it seemed impossible that any words could so mould themselves as to give distinctness to the thought which flashed through our minds. At times a representation corresponding to what Vannelle so eloquently uttered seemed embodied in every phase of opinion man had known. But, alas, there were also periods of doubt and despair analogous to those which succeed physical intoxication.
"Has any one described to you this house or its contents?" "No." "Then thought has been conveyed from mind to mind in unconditioned purity. It is as I had supposed. We are brothers forever." The next day, after an early breakfast, Vannelle summoned me to the study.
There was, at that time, a day of weary staging after leaving the cars, before arriving in the village of X ; there were also six rough miles of carriage-conveyance before the traveller could attain the old house by the damp river-marsh whereto I was destined. When I arrived there, Vannelle stood at the door to greet me.
I found Vannelle so far my superior in the knowledge of all earthly lores, that I at length came to think it possible he might be the appointed instrument of communicating the singular intelligence that he sought. He proposed to review the different systems built by human thought before applying himself to the problem of finding a system of philosophy which should include them all.
I glanced distrustfully at the confusion of the room, which seemed in strange contrast with the exquisitely neat and even fashionable attire of its proprietor. A smile of proud pity touched the lips of Vannelle, as he seemed to divine my thought. Then, as if I had read them in letters of light, these words seemed to answer me:
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