But had he got at the true secret of the lamp itself?
"How is it," he thought, as he turned impatiently from the casement, "that I am baffled here where my fortunes seemed most assured?
Here the mind has been of my own training, and prepared by nature to my hand; here all opportunity has smiled.

And suddenly the merest commonplace in the vulgar lives of mortals,--an unlooked-for rival; rival, too, of the mould I had taught her to despise; one of the stock gallants of a comedy, no character but youth and fair looks,--yea, the lover of the stage starts up, and the fabric of years is overthrown." As he thus mused, he placed his hand upon a small box on one of the tables.

"Yet within this," resumed his soliloquy, and he struck the lid, that gave back a dull sound,--"within this I hold the keys of life and death! Fool! the power does not reach to the heart, except to still it.

Verily and indeed were the old heathens mistaken?
Are there no philters to change the current of desire?
But touch one chord in a girl's affection, and all the rest is mine, all, all, lands, station, power, all the rest are in the opening of this lid!" Hide in the cloud, O Moon! shrink back, ye Stars! send not your holy, pure, and trouble-lulling light to the countenance blanched and livid with the thoughts of murder..