suspended from the ceiling. Skulls grinned from the tops of cabinets. There were rows and rows of ancient books, many of them bound in sheepskin or vellum, in a case against one wall. A few larger volumes, with brass or iron clasps, reposed on a table. Lou Matagot, who had been carried into the room with us, presently stretched his great, black, glossy length over the top of one of these. There were cauldrons, retorts, crucibles, rows of bottles, a fire, with bellows, and a clepsydra, or water-clock, which seemed to be running. There was an Arcula Mystica, or demoniac telephone, resembling a liqueur-stand. Peter explained that possessors of this instrument might communicate with each other, over whatever distance. There were cabinets, on the shelves of which lay amulets and talismans and periapts, carved from obsidian or fashioned of blue or green faience, the surfaces of which were elaborately scratched with hermetic characters, and symplegmata with their curious confusion of the different parts of different beasts. There were aspergills, and ivory pyxes, stolen, perhaps, from some holy place, and now consecrated to evil uses. There were stuffed serpents and divining rods of hazel. There were scrolls of parchment, tied with vermilion cord. In fact, there was everything in this room, that David Belasco would provide for a similar scene on the stage.
Here, said Peter, I study the Book of the Dead, hierograms, rhabdomancy, oneiromancy, hippo-
