The Purple Pterodactyls

Balsamo's Mirror

My friend in Providence took long walks, especially at night. He loved to end up at a graveyard, an abandoned church, or some such site. Since he earned a meager living by writing for Creepy Stories, he claimed that these walks inspired him with ideas. In any case, one such walk that he took with me gave him some ideas he had not foreseen.

When I was an undergraduate at M.I.T., my people lived too far away, in upstate New York, for frequent visits home. So on week ends, when up on my studies, I rattled over from Cambridge in my Model A to see my friend. We had become pen pals through the letters column of Creepy Stories. I had invited myself over, and we had found each other congenial in spite of differences of outlook, age, and temperament.

I used to love to argue. A thing I liked about my friend was that he could argue intelligently and always good-naturedly on more subjects than anyone I ever knew. Some of his ideas were brilliant; some I thought were crazy but later came to agree with; some I still think were crazy.

We found plenty to debate about. Politics was hot stuff, with the Depression still in full swing the year after Roosevelt had closed the banks. I was pretty conservative still, while my friend had just been converted from a Mesozoic conservative to an ardent New Dealer. Another young student, who sometimes dropped in, was a red-hot Communist sympathizer. So we went at it hot and heavy.

We also disputed religion. My friend was a scientific materialist and atheist; I was still a believing Christian. We argued esthetics. He defended art for art's sake; I thought that philosophy a pretext for indolence and had no use for idlers, whether rich, arty, or plain lazy.

We wrangled over international affairs. He wanted America to rejoin the British Empire; I was for splendid isolation. We argued history. He was devoted to the eighteenth century; I thought that men wearing wigs over good heads of hair looked silly.

"Willy," he said, "you are looking at the superficies only. The perukes are not significant. What is important is that this was the last period before the Industrial Revolution, with all its smoke and rattling machinery and hypertrophied cities and other horrors. Therefore, in a sense, this was the most gracious, elegant, civilized time we have ever seen or shall ever see."

"What," I said, "would you do with the surplus nine tenths of humanity, whom you'd have to get rid of if we went back to eighteenth-century technology? Starve them? Shoot them? Eat them?"

"I didn't say we could or should go back to pre-industrial technology. The changes since then were inevitable and irreversible. I only said ..."

We were still arguing when we set out on one of our nocturnal prowls. My friend could always find something to show the visitor. This, he would explain, was the house once owned by a famous Colonial pirate; that was the site of the tavern where he was seized before being hanged; and so on.

This balmy May evening, under a gibbous moon, my friend was on the track of a piece of Colonial architecture on Federal Hill. We hiked down the steep incline of Angell Street to the center of Providence. Thence we continued west up the gentler slope of Westminster Avenue, where the restaurants were called trattorias. Near Dexter Street, we turned off and trudged around little back streets until we found the Colonial house.

The doorway was still there, but the rest of the ground floor had been eviscerated to make room for a small machine shop. My friend clucked. "Damned Dagoes!" he muttered. "A pox on 'em." His ethnic prejudices, although weakening, were still pretty strong.

We examined the doorway with my pocket flashlight, my friend being too absent-minded to think of bringing his own. At last we started back. We had already walked two miles, and the climb back up Angell promised a rigorous workout. Since it was night, we could not use the elevators in the County Court House, at the foot of the slope, to save ourselves some of the climb.

In this tangle of alleys, my friend took a wrong turn. He quickly realized his error, saying: "No, Willy, it's this way. This should take us back to Westminster. I don't think I know this street."

As we neared the avenue, we passed a row of little shops, including a Chinese laundry. Nearly all were closed, although ahead we could see the lights of restaurants, bars, and a movie house on Westminster. My friend put out a hand to stop me before one place, still lit, in the row of darkened shops.

"What's this?" he said. "Damme, sirrah, it hath the look of a den of unholy mysteries!" He talked like that when in his eighteenth-century mood.

The dim-lit sign in the window said: MADAME FATIMA NOSI. FORTUNES TOLD. SPEAK WITH YOUR DEAR DEPARTED. OCCULT WISDOM SHARED. A crude painting beneath the legend showed a gypsylike woman bent over a crystal ball.

"I can just imagine," said my friend. "This is the cener of a secret, sinister cult. They're a gang of illegal immigrants from Kaftristan, where the ancient paganism survives. They worship a chthonian deity, which is in fact a gelatinous being that oozes its way through solid rock ..."

"Why not go in and see?" I said. "Madame Nosi seems open for business."

"Oh, you're so practical, Willy!" said my friend. "I had rather gaze upon this cryptic lair from afar and let my imagination soar. Inside, it is probably dirty, squalid, and altogether prosaic. Besides, our sibyl will expect remuneration, and I am badly straitened just now."

"I've got enough dough for both," I said. "Come on!"

It required urging, because my friend was a shy man and sensitive about his perennial poverty. This indigence was curious, considering his gifts and intellect. A few minutes later, however, we were in Madame Nosi's oratory.

The place was as dingy as my friend had predicted. Fatima Nosi proved a tall, strongly built, bony woman of middle age, with a big hooked nose and graying black hair hanging down from under her head scarf.

"Well," said she, "what can I do for you gentlemans?" She spoke with an accent, which did not sound Italian. She looked hard at me. "You are college student, no?"

"Yes."

"At the—um—the Massachusett Institute of the Technology, yes?"

"Yes."

"And you expect to graduation in—umm—two year, no?"

"That's right," I said, surprised at her prescience. "Name, please?"

"Wilson Newbury."

She wrote in a little notebook. "And you!" she turned to my friend. When she had written his name, she said: "You are writer, no?"

"I," said my friend, "am a gentleman who sometimes writes for his own amusement and that of his friends." His face tensed with the effort of trying to speak a foreign language without stuttering. "P-parlate italiano?" He got it out slowly, with a pronounced down-east accent. |

She looked puzzled; then her face cleared. "Cosi, cosi. But I am not Italian, me, even though I was born in Italy."

"What are you, then, if I may be so bold?" asked my friend.

"I am Tosk."

"Oh, Albanian!" he exclaimed. He said aside to me: "It fits. She's a perfect example of the Dinaric racial type, and that name didn't sound quite Italian." He turned back. "I am honored; sono—sono onorato."

"Tank you. Is many Albanians in Italy," said Madame Nosi. "They went there two, tree hundred years ago to excape the Turks. And now, what can I do for you? Horoscope? Séance? Crystal ball? I tink, you smart gentlemans no care for simple occult manifestations. You tell me what you most want. You, please." She indicated my friend.

He thought a long moment and said: "Madame, the thing whereof I am most desirous is to view the world as it was at the climax of Western civilization—that is to say, in the eighteenth century. No, permit me to amend that. It is to witness the most civilized part of that world—England—at that period."

"Umm." Madame Nosi looked doubtful. "Is difficult. But then, maybe I get chance to use the mirror of Balsamo. You got to come upstairs to inner sanctum."

She led us up creaking steps to a shabby little sitting room. Stepping to the side of the room, she pulled a cloth cover off a mirror on the wall. This mirror, otherwise ordinary-looking, had an ornately carven frame whence most of the gilding had worn off.

My friend leaned towards me and murmured: "This should be interesting. Giuseppe Balsamo, alias Count Alessandro di Cagliostro, was the most egregious faker and charlatan of the eighteenth century. Wonder what she'll do?"

"This," said Madame Nosi, "will cost you ten dollars. Is a very powerful spell. It exhaust my weak heart. If your friend want to go along with you, it cost him ten buck, too."

My friend looked stricken, as well he might. For ten dollars, one could then eat in a good restaurant for a week. Twenty sounded steep to me, also; but I had lately received a check from home and did not like to back out. Had I been older and bolder, I might have haggled—something I knew my friend could never bring himself to do. I pulled out my wallet.

"Tank you," said Madame Nosi. "Now, you sit here facing the mirror. You, too. I will light candles on this ting behind you. Look at reflections of the candles in glass."

She lit a sconce on the opposite wall. In the dimness, the reflections of my friend and me were little more than shapes. I took my eyes off the image of my gaunt, lantern-jawed friend and raised them to that of the cluster of wavering lights.

Madame Nosi bustled about behind us. A sweetish smell told me that she had lit incense. She began to croon a song in a language I did not recognize.

I cannot tell exactly when her spell, or whatever it was, took effect, any more than one can tell exactly when one drops off to sleep and begins to dream. But I presently found myself trudging a dirt road, overgrown with foot-high grass between two deep, narrow ruts.

This experience, I soon discovered, was not a simple case of time travel, such as one reads about. In stories, the time traveler arrives in another time in propria persona, able to act and function as he would in his own time. I, however, found myself in someone's else body, seeing and hearing with his organs and able to follow his thoughts but helpless to affect my host's actions. I could not even crane his neck or roll his eyes to see anything that he did not wish to look at. Now his gaze was fixed on the ground before him to avoid a stumble.

This situation avoided the familiar time-travel paradox. While I partook of all my host's experiences, mental and physical, I-could not do anything that would change an event that had already taken place. Whether this adventure should be explained as a return to a former time, or the vision of former events imposed upon my present-day mind, or sheer illusion, I cannot judge.

I could only sense the thoughts that ran through my host's conscious mind; I could not plumb his store of memories. Hence I had no way of finding out who or where or when I was, until my host happened to think of such things or until someone or something else gave me a clue.

"Now remember, lad," said a creaky voice in my ear, "no gangling after the trollops, to the peril of thy immortal soul. And if we meet the squire and his Macaroni zon, keep thy temper no matter what they zay."

At least, this is what I think he said. So strong was his unfamiliar dialect that, until I got used to it, I caught only half his words.

My host did me the favor of turning his head to look at his companion. He said: "Oh, hold thy water, Vayther. P faith, I'm a grown man, can take care.o' meself."

"Childhood and youth are vanity. Ecclesiastes eleven," said the other. "Thy loose tongue'll get us hanged yet."

"Unless thy poaching doth it virst," replied my host.

"I do but take that dominion over the vowls of the air and the beasts of the vield, which God hath given me. Zee Genesis one. 'Tis wrong o' Sir Roger to deny us poor volk the use of 'em ..."

My companion, evidently my host's father, continued grumbling before relapsing into silence. He was a man of mature years, with the gnarled brown hands and deeply creased brown neck of a lifelong outdoor worker. He wore the knee breeches and full-skirted coat of the eighteenth century, but these were of coarse, self-colored homespun, patched and darned. His calves were clad in a pair of baggy, soiled cotton stockings, and his big, shapeless shoes did not differ as to right and left.

On his head rode a large, full-bottomed, mouse-colored wig, which hung to his shoulders but from which half the hair had fallen out. On top of the wig was a stained, battered, wide-brimmed felt hat, turned up in back but otherwise allowed to droop in scallops.

Besides the wig, he also flaunted a full if straggly gray beard. I had thought that all men in this era were shaven.

I wondered if my friend was imprisoned in the body of the father, as I was in that of the son. If so, the beard was a good joke on him. As a devotee of the eighteenth century, my friend detested all hair on the face. He had long nagged me about my harmless little mustache. If indeed my friend was there, though, there was no way for me to communicate with him.

Then I thought: was I, too, wearing a wig? I could not tell. It would be an equally good joke on me, who despised wigs.

The pair subsided into silence, save for an occasional muttered remark. They were not great talkers. I could follow the thoughts of the son, but these did little to orient me. The jumble of names, faces, and scenes flickered past me too quickly to analyze.

I did learn that my host's name was William, that his father was a yeoman farmer, and that they were the only surviving members of their family. I also learned that the father had a feud with the local squire, and that they were on their way to a fair. From an allusion to Bristol, I gathered that we were somewhere in the Southwest of England. From the look of the vegetation, I surmised that it was springtime.

The open fields and woodlots gave way to a straggle of small houses, and these thickened into a village. From the height of the dim, ruddy orb that passes for sun in England, I judged that the time was about midday.

On the edge of the village roared the fair. There were swarms of rustics, clad more or less like my father (for so I had come to think of him). There were a few ladies and gentlemen in more photogenic eighteenth-century attire, with high heels and powdered wigs. Some younger men, I noted, wore their own hair in pigtails instead of wigs. My father's beard, however, was the only one in sight.

When we got into the crowd, the stink of unwashed humankind was overpowering. Although I, who smelled with his olifactory nerves, found it horrible, William seemed not to notice. I suppose he was pretty ripe himself. From the itches in various parts of his body, I suspected that he harbored a whole fauna of parasites.

Two teams were playing cricket. Beyond, young men were running and jumping in competition. There was a primitive merry-go-round, powered by an old horse. A boy followed the beast round and round, beating it to keep it moving. There were edibles and drinkables for sale; of the fairgoers, some were already drunk.

There were games of chance and skill: throwing balls and quoits at targets, guessing- which walnut shell the pea was under, cards, dice, and a wheel of fortune. A row of tents housed human freaks and a large one, a camel. A cockfight and a puppet show, striving to outshout each other, were going on at the further end of the grounds.

My father would not let me squander our few pence on most of these diversions, but he paid tuppence for us to see the camel. This mangy-looking beast loftily chewed its cud while a man in an "Arab costume" made of old sheeting lectured on the camel's qualities. Most of what he said was wrong.

"Hola there!" cried a voice. I—or rather the William whose body I shared—turned. One of the gentlemen was addressing us—a well-set-up man of middle years, with a lady on his arm.

"Stap me vitals," said this man, "if it beant old Phil!"

My father and I took off our hats and bowed. My father said: "God give you good day, Mayster Bradford! Good day, your la'ship! 'Tis an unexpected pleasure."

Bradford came up and shook my father's hand. " 'Tis good for the optics to see you again, Philip. You, too, Will. Zookers, but ye've grown!"

"Aye, he's a good lad," said Philip. "The earth hath zwallowed all my hopes but un."

"The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Tell me, Phil, how goes it betwixt you and Sir Roger?'

"Ill enough," said my father. "E'er since the enclosure, he hath been at me to sell out me poor little patch to add to his grand acres."

"Why don't ye sell?" said Bradford. "I hear he hath offered a good price."

"Nay, zir, with all due respect, that I won't. Shirlaws ha' been there zince memory runneth not to the contrary, and I'll not be the virst to gi' it up. And if I did, 'twould not be to a titled villain who rides his damned vox hunt across me crops. Clean ruined last year's barley, he did."

"Same stubborn old Phil! Roger Stanwyck's not so bad a cully if ye get on's good side. For all's glouting humors, he doth good works of charity." Bradford lowered his voice. "Harkee, Phil, we're old friends, and ne'er mind the distinctions o' rank. Sell out to Sir Roger for the best price ye can get, but quit this contention. Otherwise, I shan't be able to answer for your well-being. Verbum sat sapienti."

"What mean ye, zir?"

"In's cups, which is oft enough, he boasts that he'll have your land or have you dancing on the nubbing cheat ere the twelvemonth be out."

"Aye, zir?" said Philip.

"Aye verily, no question. I was there, at a party at Colonel Armitage's. Roger's the magistrate and can do't."

"He must needs ge' me dited and convicted virst."

"I' fackins, man, talk sense! With all the hanging offenses on the books, they can string you up for auft more heinous than spitting on the floor."

"Fie! Juries won't convict in such cases."

"If they happen to like you. I needn't tell you ye be not the most popular man hereabouts."

"Aye, Mayster Bradford, but wherefore? I lead a good Christian life."

"Imprimus, ye loft against the enclosure."

"Sartainly I did. 'Tis the doom o' the independent farmer."

"Me good Philip, the day of the old English yeoman is past. The country needs corn, and the only way to get it is to carve up all these wasteful commons and put 'em to grain crops. Secundus, ye are a Methodist, and to these folk that's worse nor a Papist or a Jew. They'd be tickled to see a wicked heretic swing, specially since we haven't had a hanging in o'er a year."

"I believe what the Almighty and the Good Book tell me."

"Tertius, ye wear that damned beard."

"I do but obey the divine commands, zir. Zee Leviticus nineteen."

"And quartus, ye are learned beyond your station. I don't mind; I like to see the lower orders better themselves— within reason, o' course. But the villagers think ye give yourself airs and hate you for't."

"I only strive to obey God the more wisely by me little laming. Zee Proverbs one, vifth verse. As for zelling out to Zir Roger, I'll come to the parish virst."

Bradford sighed and threw up his hands. "Well, say not that I failed to warn you. But hark, if ye do sell, ye shall have a good place with me for the asking. 'Twon't be arra clodhopping chore, neither, but a responsible post with good pay. Ask me sarvents if I beant a good master."

"Well, thankee, zir_r but—"

"Think it o'er." Bradford clapped Philip on the shoulder and went away with his wife.

We strolled about, bought a snack of bread and cheese, and watched the contests. William would have liked to spend money on the freak shows and the gambling games, but Philip sternly forbade. Then a shout brought us about.

"Hey, Shirlaw! Philip Shirlaw!"

We were addressed by a stout, red-faced man with a strip of gold lace on his three-cornered hat. He came swiftly towards us, poling himself along with a four-foot, gold-headed walking stick. With him was a gorgeously dressed young man, tall and slender. The young man carried his hat beneath his arm, because it could never have been fitted over his wig. This wig, besides the curls at the sides and the queue at the back, shot up in a foot-high pompadour in front.

The youth was as pale as the older one was ruddy and had black beauty spots glued to cheek and jaw. He languidly waved a pale, slender hand as he spoke.

"I'll have a word with thee, sarrah," said the red-faced one.

"Aye, your honor?" replied Philip.

"Not here, not here. Come to my house this afternoon-after dinner-time will do."

"Father!" said the youth. "You forget, Mr. Harcourt and's wife are dining with us." I noted that the young man dropped his final r's, like a modern Englishman, whereas the others with whom we had spoken did not.

"So he doth, so he doth," grumbled Sir Roger Stanwyck. "Make it within the hour, Shirlaw. We're about to depart the fair, so tarry not!"

It was a long walk back from the fair to Sir Roger's mansion, but the squire would never have thought to offer us a lift in his coach.

Stanwyck House so swarmed with servants that it was a wonder they did not fall over one another. One of them ushered us into Sir Roger's study. I had little chance to observe the surroundings, save as William's vision happened to light on things; and he had been here before. There was, for instance, a pair of swords crossed behind a shield on the wall—but all made of glass, not steel.

Sir Roger, wineglass in hand, glowered at us from a big wing chair, then put on a forced smile. His son, seated at a harpsichord and playing something by Handel, left off his strumming and swung around.

"Now, Shirlaw!" barked Sir Roger. "I have argued with thee and pleaded with thee, to no avail. Art a stubborn old fart; s'bud, I'll give thee credit. To show me heart's in the right place, I'll raise me last offer to an hundred guineas even. 'Tis thrice what thy lousy patch is worth and will set thee up for life. But that's all; not a brass farden more. What say ye? What say ye?"

"Zorry, zir," said Philip. "I ha' gi'en you mine answer, and that's that. Me land stays mine."

They argued some more, while the son patted yawns. Sir Roger got redder and redder. At last he jumped up, roaring:

"All right, get out, thou Hanoverian son of a bitch! I'll Methodist thee! If one method won't sarve, there's a mort more in me locker. Get out!"

"Your honor may kiss mine arse," said Philip as he turned away.

Behind us, Sir Roger hurled his wineglass at us but missed. The glass shattered, and Sir Roger screamed: "John! Abraham! Throw me these rascals out! Fetch me sword, somebody! I'll quality them to run for the geldings' plate! Charles, ye mincing milksop, why don't ye drub me these runagates?"

"La, Father, you know that I—" began the young man. The rest was lost in the distance as Philip and William walked briskly out, before the hired help could organize a posse. Behind us, the clock struck four.

I was myself filled with rage, both from that I got from William's mind and on my own account. If I had been in charge of William's body, I might have tried something foolish. It is just as well that I was not. In those days, a peasant simply did not punch a knight or baronet (whichever Sir Roger was) in the nose, no matter what the provocation.

We left the grounds by another path, which led across a spacious lawn. At the edge of this lawn, the ground dropped sharply. There was a retaining wall, where the surface descended almost vertically for six or eight feet into a shallow ditch. From this depression, the earth sloped gently up on the other side, almost to the level on the inner lawn. This structure, like a miniature fortification, was called a ha-ha. Its purpose was to afford those in the house a distant, unobstructed grassy vista and at the same time keep the deer and other wild life away from the inner lawns and flower beds.

We descended a flight of steps, which cut through the ha-ha, and continued along a winding path. This path led over a brook and through a wood. On the edge of the brook, workmen were building a tea house in Chinese style, with red and black paint and gilding. As we followed the winding path through the wood, a rabbit hopped away.

"Hm," said Philip Shirlaw. "That o'erweening blackguard ... And us wi' noft but bread and turnips in the house. Harkee, Will, Zir Roger dines at vive, doth he not?"

"Aye," said William. " 'Twas vour, but that craichy zon o' his hath broft the new vashion vrom London."

"Well, now," said Philip, "meseems that God hath put us in the way of a bit o' flesh to spice our regiment. Wi' guests at Stanwyck House, the Stanwycks'll be close to home from vive to nigh unto midnight. Those ungodly gluttons dawdle vive or zix hours o'er their meat, and the pack o' zarvents'll be clustered round to uphold Zir Roger's hospitality. By the time they're throf, Zir Roger'll be too drunk to know what betides."

"Dost plan to nab one o' his honor's coneys?"

"Aye, thof it an't Zir Roger's but God's."

"Oh, Vayther, have a care! Remember Mayster Bradford's warning—"

"The Almighty will take care of us."

Another half hour brought us to our own farm and house. The house was little more than a shack, not much above the level of the houses of comic-strip hillbillies. Furnishings were minimal, save that a shelf along one wall bore a surprising lot of books. This must be what Bradford had meant when he spoke of Philip Shirlaw's being learned above his station.

Since William did not fix his eyes on this shelf for more than a few seconds at a time, I could not tell much about Philip's choice of books. I caught a glimpse of several volumes of sermons by John Wesley and George Whitefield. There were also, I think, a Bible, a Shakespeare, and a Plutarch.

Philip Shirlaw climbed up into the loft and came down with a pair of small crossbows. I was astonished, supposing these medieval weapons to have been long obsolete. I later learned that they were used for poaching as late as the time of our adventure, being favored for their silence.

William unhappily tried again to dissuade his sire: "Don't let thy grudge against Zir Roger lead thee into risking our necks. Colonel Armitage's vootman, Jemmy Thome, hath told me 'tis a hanging offence to 'trespass with intent to kill rabbits.' Them are the words o' the statute."

I followed the argument with growing apprehension. What would happen to me if William were killed while I shared his body?

But Philip Shirlaw was not to be swayed. "Pooh! Put thy trust in Providence, zon, and vear noft. Nor do I, as a good Christian, bear Zir Roger a grudge. I do but take my vair share o' the vruits o' the earth, which God hath provided for all mankind. Zee the ninth chapter o' Genesis."

The steel crossbow bolts were about the size of a modern pencil. With a pocket full of these and a crossbow under his arm, William set out behind his father.

They scouted the woods between the Stanwyck estate and the Shirlaw farm, seeing and hearing none. The sun sank lower and disappeared behind the clouds, which thickened with a promise of rain.

As Philip had surmised, all the service personnel of Stanwyck House had gone to the mansion to wait upon the master and his guests.

At last—it must have been nearly six—we roused a rabbit, which went hippety-hoppity through the big old oaks. William made a quick motion, but Philip stayed him with a geture. Carefully, they cocked their weapons, placed their bolts in the grooves, and scouted forward.

They raised the rabbit again, but again it bolted before they got within range. Being old hands at this, they spread out and continued their stalk.

The woods thinned, and they reached the edge of the outer lawns, not far from the ha-ha. In the depression that ran along the foot of the ha-ha sat their rabbit, nibbling.

Philip's crossbow twanged. The quarrel whined. The rabbit tumbled over.

"Got un!" said William.

The Shirlaws ran out from the wood to seize the game, when a bellow halted them. Atop the ha-ha stood Sir Roger Stanwyck and his son Charles. Sir Roger held a musket trained upon them; Charles, a pistol.

"Ha!" roared Sir Roger. "Said I not I'd have you? The divil set upon me if I don't see you twain dangling from the hempseed caudle!"

"O Gemini, they mean it!" muttered William. "Get ready to vlee!"

"Drop those crossbows!" came the high voice of Charles Stanwyck.

William's bow was still cocked- and loaded. Without thinking, the young man whipped up the weapon and discharged it at Sir Roger. He missed, and the whistle of the bolt was drowned by the roar of the musket. I heard the ball strike Philip, who fell backwards with a piercing scream. William dropped his crossbow and ran for the woods.

Another flash lit up the evening landscape. The report came to William's ears just as a terrific blow struck him in the back ...

And then I was back in Madame Nosi's room, on my feet but staggering back from the wall. About the floor lay the shattered remains of Balsamo's mirror. To my left lay my friend. Madame Nosi was not to be seen, but I had a dim memory of terrible shrieks and crashes just before my "awakening."

I dashed to the head of the stair. At the foot, in an unlovely sprawl, lay Madame Nosi.

After a second's hesitation, I went back to the room. My friend was sitting up on the floor, mumbling: "Wha—what hath happened? I thought I was shot ..."

"Come, help me!" I said. We descended to Madame Nosi.

"Pull her up," said my friend. "It's not decent for her to be lying upside down like that."

"Don't touch her!" I said. "Shouldn't move an injured person until the doctor comes." I felt for her pulse but found none.

A policeman appeared, followed by a couple of neighbors. The cop asked: "What goes on? What's the screaming and crashing—oh!" He sighted Fatima Nosi.

In due course, the ambulance came and took Madame Nosi. For the next few days, my friend and I spent hours answering questions by the coroner and other officials.

As nearly as we could reconstruct the events, my friend and I had leaped out of our chairs at the moment when, in our eighteenth-century lives, we were shot by the Stanwycks. I had blundered into the wall and broken the mirror. Whether in sudden panic at the success of her spell, or for some other reason, Madame Nosi had run out of the room. She had died, not from the effects of the fall, as we at first supposed, but from heart failure before she fell. Her physician testified that she had suffered from heart disease.

The officials, although puzzled and suspicious, let us go.

They swept up the fragments of Balsamo's mirror for "evidence," but I could never find out what became of the pieces. I had some vague idea of putting them together but let it go in the rush of cramming for spring finals. I suppose the pieces were thrown out with the trash.

When it was over, my friend sighed and said: "I fear me that the eighteenth century, which I have idealized all these years, never really existed. The real one was far dirtier, more narrow-minded, brutal, orthodox, and superstitious than I could have ever conceived without seeing it. Gawd, to be cooped up in the body of a bewhiskered amateur theologian and not be able to say a word to controvert his fallacies! The eighteenth century I visualized was a mere artifact—a product of my imagination, compounded of pictures in books which I saw as a child, things I had read, and bits of Colonial architecture I've seen."

"Then," I asked, "you'll settle down and be reconciled to your own twentieth century?"

"Good heavens, no! Our experience—assuming it to be genuine and not a mere hallucination—only serves to convince me that the real world, anywhere or in any age, is no place for a gentleman of sensitivity. So I shall spend more time in the world of dreams. If you like, Willy, I shall be glad to meet you there. There's a palace of lapis lazuli I must, show you, atop a mountain of glass ..."