The Familiar Imp

I have never communicated with you, and I feel very happy to add to your literary pleiad. You know well, you who read with such relish, what intuition I had for that which is called the fantastic world. Many times alone, in the long winter nights, withdrawn to a corner of my solitary hearth, I listened to the moaning of the plaintive notes of the wind. While my distracted gaze vaguely followed the flaming designs of the fire, surely the domestic sprite entertained me, and I was not inventing Trilby — I repeated what he had murmured to my attentive ear. What a charming thing to feel that there live around us those invisible guests! With them, no mysteries: they love you, in spite of yourself, and they know you better than you know yourselves. In my literary life, in my life as a man, I owe to those invisible friends my best successes and my dearest consolations. It is my turn now to murmur, to friendly ears, the things that the heart divines and does not repeat. That is to say to you, dear medium, that I shall often have the sweet privilege of conversing with you. Charles Nodier. n Allan Kardec.

Paris. — Typ. H. CARION, rue Bonaparte, 64.

[1] [see Charles Nodier.]