He is too polite to accuse me of foolishness, but his sarcastic
smile would betray him.'
Susie went to the shelves to which he vaguely waved, and looked with a
peculiar excitement at the mysterious array. She ran her eyes along the
names. It seemed to her that she was entering upon an unknown region of
romance. She felt like an adventurous princess who rode on her palfrey
into a forest of great bare trees and mystic silences, where wan,
unearthly shapes pressed upon her way.
'I thought once of writing a life of that fantastic and grandiloquent
creature, Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombast von
Hohenheim,' said Dr Porhoet, 'and I have collected many of his books.'
He took down a slim volume in duodecimo, printed in the seventeenth
century, with queer plates, on which were all manner of cabbalistic
signs. The pages had a peculiar, musty odour. They were stained with
iron-mould.
'Here is one of the most interesting works concerning the black art.
It is the _Grimoire of Honorius_, and is the principal text-book of all
those who deal in the darkest ways of the science.
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