clearer theory may be arrived at.’  Then he pulled over me a great movable lens as of a microscope, which concentrated the insupportable light.  The wild, hopeless passion that raged within my soul had no outlet in the immovable apparatus that held me.  I was let down among the crowd, and exhibited to them every secret movement of my being, by some awful process which I have never fathomed.  A burning fire was in my brain; flame seemed to run along all my nerves; speechless, horrible, incommunicable fury raged in my soul.  But I was like a child—­nay, like an image of wood or wax—­in the pitiless hands that held me.  What was the cut of a surgeon’s knife to this?  And I had thought that cruel!  And I was powerless, and could do nothing—­to blast, to destroy, to burn with this same horrible flame the fiends that surrounded me, as I desired to do.

Suddenly, in the raging fever of my thoughts, there surged up the recollection of that word which had paralyzed all around, and myself with them.  The thought that I must share the anguish did not restrain me from my revenge.  With a tremendous effort I got my voice, though the instrument pressed upon my lips.  I know not what I articulated save ‘God,’ whether it was a curse or a blessing.  I had been swung out into the middle of the hall, and hung amid the crowd, exposed to all their observations, when I succeeded in gaining utterance.  My God! my God!  Another moment and I had forgotten them and all my fury in the tortures that arose within myself.  What, then, was the light that racked my brain?  Once more my life from its beginning to its end rose up before me,—­each scene like a spectre, like the harpies of the old fables rending me with tooth and claw.  Once more I saw what might have been, the noble things I might have done, the happiness I had lost, the turnings of the fated road which I might have taken,—­everything that was once so possible, so possible, so easy! but now possible no more.  My anguish was immeasurable; I turned and wrenched myself, in the strength of pain, out of the machinery that held me, and fell down, down among all the curses that were being hurled at me,—­among the horrible and miserable crowd.  I had brought upon them the evil which I shared, and they fell upon me with a fury which was like that which had prompted myself a few minutes before; but they could do nothing to me so tremendous as the vengeance I had taken upon them.  I was too miserable to feel the blows that rained upon me, but presently I suppose I lost consciousness altogether, being almost torn to pieces by the multitude.

While this lasted, it seemed to me that I had a dream.  I felt the blows raining down upon me, and my body struggling upon the ground; and yet it seemed to me that I was lying outside upon the ground, and above me the pale sky which never brightened at the touch of the sun.  And I thought that dull, persistent cloud wavered and broke for an instant, and that I saw behind a glimpse of that blue which is heaven when we are on the earth—­the blue sky—­which is nowhere to be seen but in the mortal life; which is heaven enough, which is delight enough, for those who can look up to it, and feel themselves in the land of hope.  It might be but a dream; in this strange world who could tell what was vision and what was true?