Wace
does not think that he was altogether free from occasional intemperance.
He had begun life in a comfortable position, he was a man of fair
education, and he suffered, for weeks at a stretch, from melancholia and
insomnia. Afraid to disturb his family, he would slip quietly from his
wife's side, when his thoughts became intolerable, and wander about the
house. And about three o'clock one morning, late in August, chance
directed him into the shop.
The dirty little place was impenetrably black except in one spot, where he
perceived an unusual glow of light. Approaching this, he discovered it to
be the crystal egg, which was standing on the corner of the counter
towards the window. A thin ray smote through a crack in the shutters,
impinged upon the object, and seemed as it were to fill its entire
interior.
It occurred to Mr. Cave that this was not in accordance with the laws of
optics as he had known them in his younger days. He could understand the
rays being refracted by the crystal and coming to a focus in its interior,
but this diffusion jarred with his physical conceptions.
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