Page:Gaston Leroux--The man with the black feather.djvu/174

152  æternæ solius veræ. It was the rose of the Rosicrucians.

Below it were these words:

"I am not shutting my eyes," said Theophrastus to himself, "and I am wearing spectacles, yet I'll be hanged if I know where I am!"

His eyes fell on this inscription in letters of gold:

"From the moment that you have performed an action, a single action, apply to it all the intelligence you have, seek its salient points, examine it in the light, abandon yourself to hypotheses, fly in front of them, if need be."

He saw hawks, vultures, jackals, men with heads of birds, several scarabs, a god with an ass's head, then a sceptre, an ass, and an eye.

Finally he read these words in blue letters: "The more the soul shall be rooted in its instincts, the more it shall lie forgotten in the flesh, the less shall it have knowledge of its immortal life, and the longer it shall remain prisoner in living carcasses."

Growing impatient at the long absence of