Page:Julian Niemcewicz - Notes of my Captivity in Russia.djvu/188

160 imagination, which at first amuses us by the variety of its dreams and phantoms, is soon fixed, frequently upon a single image or favourite object, magnifies it beyond measure, and, finally, drives every other idea out of our head, and leads our reason entirely astray. Kapostas had naturally a great bias for metaphysics and occult sciences; he knew Hebrew; the works of the Rabbis treating on the Cabala, and those of Schepher and the Martinists had entirely turned his head. He believed that by subjecting himself to a certain mode of living, using a certain food, isolating his thoughts and heart from every affection and every foreign idea, and by combining some verses of the Bible for conjuring, he should be able to communicate with invisible spirits, to unveil the secrets hidden from the eyes of the vulgar, to transfer himself into the empyrean regions, and to see, in fine, the Author of the universe, and converse with him. Every day, at sunset, I heard him pronouncing his Hebrew evocations, and, although the spirits did not answer him, he