Four champagne glasses were also on the table.
"My dear old friends," repeated Dr. Heidegger, "may I reckon on your aid
in performing an exceedingly curious experiment?"
Now Dr. Heidegger was a very strange old gentleman, whose eccentricity
had become the nucleus for a thousand fantastic stories. Some of these
fables, to my shame be it spoken, might possibly be traced back to mine
own veracious self; and if any passage of the present tale should
startle the reader's faith, I must be content to bear the stigma of a
fiction monger.
When the doctor's four guests heard him talk of his proposed experiment,
they anticipated nothing more wonderful than the murder of a mouse in an
air pump, or the examination of a cobweb by the microscope, or some
similar nonsense, with which he was constantly in the habit of pestering
his intimates. But without waiting for a reply, Dr. Heidegger hobbled
across the chamber, and returned with the same ponderous folio, bound in
black leather, which common report affirmed to be a book of magic.
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