who obviously had a good deal more to say. On my turning, indeed, he began at once.
I have made, he said, some tentative minor experiments but my final experiments are yet to be attempted. Nevertheless, I have found a springboard from which to leap into my romance. Let me read you a few pages of Arthur Waite's somewhat ironic summary of Dr. Bataille's Le Diable au XIXe Siecle. Naturally I shall treat the subject more seriously, but what atmosphere, what a gorgeous milieu in which to plunge the reader when he shall open my book!
Peter now took from the shelves a small black volume, lettered in red, and turned over the leaves. First, he said, I shall read you some of the Doctor's experiences in Pondicherry, and he began:
Through the greenery of a garden, the gloom of a well, and the entanglement of certain stairways, they entered a great dismantled temple, devoted to the service of Brahma, under the unimpressive diminutive of Lucif. The infernal sanctuary had a statue of Baphomet, identical with that in Ceylon, and the ill-ventilated place reeked with a horrible putrescence. Its noisome condition was mainly owing to the presence of various fakirs, who, though still alive, were in advanced stages of putrefaction. Most people are supposed to go easily and pleasantly to the devil, but these elected to do so by way of a charnel-house asceticism, and an elaborate system of self-torture. Some were suspended from the
