Lives of Alcyone

immediately into a deep trance, but with a smile of ineffable
happiness upon his face.
In that strange trance his physical body lay for a period of
seven years, exactly as Mercury had foretold, and all this time the
latter’ s directions were implicitly followed by Percy, who took the
greatest care that every detail should be carried out exactly as it had
been ordered. This prolonged trance was of course regarded by the
temple authorities as a miracle of the first order, and it was indirectly
the cause of an enormous increase in the revenues, as the whole
affair became noised abroad, and pilgrims came by thousands from
distant parts to see the sleeping priest.
During the trance, the consciousness of Alcyone rested
almost entirely upon the mental plane; it was in fact the
consciousness of the ego in close contact with the ego of Mercury,
both apparently under the direction of, and it were bound together by
and in, a still higher consciousness, which was directing both to
some great end at present unexpressed. All this time Alcyone’ s
physical body lay rested in perfect health, all its particles gradually
changing in the natural course of events, while his astral and mental
bodies were being steadily moulded by the pressure of these higher
influences. When, at the end of this long sleep, he awoke in the
most natural manner on the very day that had been fixed by
Mercury, he was in the physical brain entirely unconscious of all that
had passed, remembering only the appearance and the words of
Mercury, just as though what had happened then had taken place
only the evening before.
When Percy informed him of the lapse of years he was at first
utterly incredulous, and only by slow degrees and by the most