text:  Around the room the dark old panels of which unrelieved by pictures and hangings rendered it gloomy and severe were scattered books and instruments such as were used by the astronomers or rather astrologers of the day and a variety of other objects of a bizarre and mysterious form which as the light of the lamp flickered feebly upon them might have been taken in their dark nooks for the crouching forms of familiar imps attendant upon a sorcerer