recompense, you know
what I have promised."

"My lord, I have my reward already."

"How so?"

"I know what I know."

"Very well. Then as for secrecy--"

"You have securities, my lord."

"Yes--and sufficient ones."

"The interest of the cause I serve, my lord, would alone be enough to
secure my zeal and discretion."

"True; you are a man of firm and ardent convictions."

"I strive to be so, my lord."

"And, after all, a very religious man in your way. It is very
praiseworthy, in these irreligious times, to have any views at all on
such matters--particularly when those views will just enable me to count
upon your aid."

"You may count upon it, my lord, for the same reason that the intrepid
hunter prefers a jackal to ten foxes, a tiger to ten jackals, a lion to
ten tigers, and the welmiss to ten lions."

"What is the welmiss?"

"It is what spirit is to matter, the blade to the scabbard, the perfume
to the flower, the head to the body."

"I understand. There never was a more just comparison. You are a man of
sound judgment. Always recollect what you have just told me, and make
yourself more and more worthy of the confidence of--your idol."

"Will he soon be in a state to hear me, my lord?"

"In two or three days, at most. Yesterday a providential crisis saved
his life; and he is endowed with so energetic a will, that his cure will
be very rapid."

"Shall you see him again to-morrow, my lord?"

"Yes, before my departure, to bid him farewell."

"Then tell him a strange circumstance, of which I have not been able to
inform him, but which happened yesterday."

"What was it?"

"I had gone to the garden of the dead. I saw funerals everywhere, and
lighted torches, in the midst of the black night, shining upon tombs.
Bowanee smiled in her ebon sky. As I thought of that divinity of
destruction, I beheld with joy the dead-cart emptied of its coffins.
The immense pit yawned like the mouth of hell; corpses were heaped
upon corpses, and still it yawned the same. Suddenly, by the light of a
torch, I saw an old man beside me. He wept. I had seen him before. He is
a Jew--the keeper of the house in the Rue Saint-Francois--you know what
I mean." Here the man in the cloak started.

"Yes, I know; but what is the matter? why do you stop short?"

"Because in that house there has been for a hundred and fifty years the
portrait of a man whom I once met in the centre of India, on the banks
of the Ganges." And the man