Upon a paper attached to the Narrative which follows,
Doctor Hesselius has written a rather elaborate note,
which he accompanies with a reference to his Essay
on the strange subject which the MS. illuminates.
This mysterious subject he treats, in that Essay,
with his usual learning and acumen, and with remarkable
directness and condensation. It will form but
one volume of the series of that extraordinary man’s
collected papers.
As I publish the case, in this volume, simply to interest
the “laity,” I shall forestall the intelligent
lady, who relates it, in nothing; and after due consideration,
I have determined, therefore, to abstain from presenting
any precis of the learned Doctor’s reasoning,
or extract from his statement on a subject which he
describes as “involving, not improbably, some
of the profoundest arcana of our dual existence, and
its intermediates.”
I was anxious on discovering this paper, to reopen
the correspondence commenced by Doctor Hesselius,
so many years before, with a person so clever and
careful as his informant seems to have been. Much
to my regret, however, I found that she had died in
the interval.
She, probably, could have added little to the Narrative
which she communicates in the following pages,
with, so far as I can pronounce, such conscientious
particularity.
An Early Fright
In Styria, we, though by no means magnificent people,
inhabit a castle, or schloss. A small income,
in that part of the world, goes a great way.
Eight or nine hundred a year does wonders. Scantily
enough ours would have answered among wealthy people
at home. My father is English, and I bear an
English name, although I never saw England. But
here, in this lonely and primitive place, where everything
is so marvelously cheap, I really don’t see
how ever so much more money would at all materially
add to our comforts, or even luxuries.
My father was in the Austrian service, and retired
upon a pension and his patrimony, and purchased this
feudal residence, and the small estate on which it
stands, a bargain.
Nothing can be more picturesque or solitary.
It stands on a slight eminence in a forest. The
road, very old and narrow, passes in front of its
drawbridge, never raised in my time, and its moat,
stocked with perch, and sailed over by many swans,
and floating on its surface white fleets of water
lilies.
Over all this the schloss shows its many-windowed
front; its towers, and its Gothic chapel.
The forest opens in an irregular and very picturesque
glade before its gate, and at the right a steep Gothic
bridge carries the road over a stream that winds in
deep shadow through the wood. I have said that
this is a very lonely place. Judge whether I
say truth. Looking from the hall door towards
the road, the forest in which our castle stands extends
fifteen miles to the right, and twelve to the left.
The nearest inhabited village is about seven of your
English miles to the left. The nearest inhabited
schloss of any historic associations, is that of old
General Spielsdorf, nearly twenty miles away to the
right.
