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Updated: June 22, 2025
What need to tell how I was fascinated, mesmerized, into a humble companionship? how I became inspired with his own mighty belief in the feasibility of the object he strove to attain? We read together certain manuscripts of the elder Vannelle, in which, wrapt in a gorgeous symbolism, seemed dimly to approach a great truth, which, at times, could be faintly perceived, but never mastered.
The wretched window-glass breaking and distorting the pine-trees without. Little oval mirrors distorting the human countenance within. A square, cellarless room, about twenty feet from the house, had been the study of the elder Vannelle. A jumble of retorts and other chemical apparatus about the floor.
What woman would kiss that ghastly cheek? What sycophant could fawn and smirk in that chilly presence? The injunctions concerning the offending eye and hand Vannelle had interpreted literally. "I hold," he continued, "the noble prize of intellectual satisfaction seized by effort.
"I hope to be pardoned," I said, "the current of this life sets so in favor of Utility and the Practical; men long to be fed with sentiment, why try to give them ideas?" "Fulfil, then, forever your little round of decencies and proprieties," exclaimed Vannelle; "I judge you not. Perchance your weakness is the pardonable weakness of one who has done his best.
Those pink tiles about the fireplace may be interesting to antiquaries; but I rather prefer the blue variety, as corresponding to the mental state in which their infinitely pretentious subjects and execrable drawing always put me." The lightness of speech was painfully forced. Vannelle turned to me and said, slowly, "Have you been here before?" "No."
If, as I sometimes suspect, I have thrust from me the grandest opportunity ever offered to man, the loss through all eternity will be mine. In eight days I heard of the death of Herbert Vannelle. As the last words of his strange narration fell from Clifton's lips, he bowed his head and was greatly agitated.
Without acknowledging it to myself, I had been strangely wrought upon by what I had read and heard. As Clifton emerged from the magical influence of Vannelle, was it not concentrated upon me? The impulse to return to the perusal of the manuscript was almost irresistible.
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