And for this I must write the
rest of my story here amid iron gratings, through which, however,
thank God, my familiars, the stars, and the red, blue, and golden
planets, glance kindly, saying, "Courage, brother! soon thou shaft
rise to us, to whom thou belongest!" Yet I will write it: one day men
will read, and say, "Come, let us garnish the sepulchre of one immured
because his stupid age could not understand!" and then, doubtless,
they will go forth to stone the seer on whose tongue lies the noblest
secret of the Universe for that day.
When I left the last experiment mentioned in these pages, in order to
recover steadiness of brain and nerve, and to relieve my overtaxed
eyes, I had no hope of reaching success in any other way than that
pointed out in the principle which I was pressing,--a principle whose
importance is proved in the familiar experiments on stereoscopic
views, whereby things entirely invisible to the naked eye are
disclosed by lenses. But that night I dreamed out the success which
had eluded my waking hours. I have nothing to say here about the
phenomenon of dreaming: I state only the fact. In my dream there
appeared to me my father, bearing in his left hand a plate of glass,
and in his right a phial of bright blue liquid which he seemed to be
pouring on the polished surface.
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