"From these remote settlements of theirs they make excursions into the inhabited world; they mingle sometimes among men, stirring them to murder and rapine, sowing discontent among the people, and prompting rulers to tyrannous deeds of cruelty and violence. This Niccolo Davelli, as he calls himself, was very active in the most corrupt and violent years of the tenth century, when he was the active adviser of an Italian bandit baron.
"But they have seldom taken prominent action in their own persons in more modern times, although here and there they appear in subordinate characters, stirring up strife and all kinds of evil, and then they pass elsewhither.
"But this Davelli has lately taken up a line of action against God and man which some of the more powerful of his kind took up ages ago with far wider success; he has established here, and in the inaccessible parts of the Himalayas, and in one or two other places, artificial seed-beds of pestilence. His emissaries gather, from all quarters, germs of natural and healthful growth, and submit them to a special cultivation under which they become obnoxious and hurtful to human nature. And then they sow them here and there in the most likely places, and thus produce
