s members of the
Venetian Senate! I must confess that I was very glad of it, and I told my
patient that a proper diet was all he needed, and that nature, assisted
by the approaching fine season, would do the rest.

The dismissed physician related the affair through the town, and, as M.
de Bragadin was rapidly improving, one of his relations, who came to see
him, told him that everybody was astonished at his having chosen for his
physician a fiddler from the theatre; but the senator put a stop to his
remarks by answering that a fiddler could know more than all the doctors
in Venice, and that he owed his life to me.

The worthy nobleman considered me as his oracle, and his two friends
listened to me with the deepest attention. Their infatuation encouraging
me, I spoke like a learned physician, I dogmatized, I quoted authors whom
I had never read.

M. de Bragadin, who had the weakness to believe in the occult sciences,
told me one day that, for a young man of my age, he thought my learning
too extensive, and that he was certain I was the possessor of some
supernatural endowment. He entreated me to tell him the truth.

What extraordinary things will sometimes occur from mere chance, or from
the force of circumstances! Unwilling to hurt his vanity by telling him
that he was mistaken, I took the wild resolution of informing him, in the
presence of his two friends, that I possessed a certain numeral calculus
which gave answers (also in numbers), to any questions I liked to put.

M. de Bragadin said that it was Solomon's key, vulgarly called cabalistic
science, and he asked me from whom I learnt it.

"From an old hermit," I answered, "who lives on the Carpegna Mountain,
and whose acquaintance I made quite by chance when I was a prisoner in
the Spanish army."

"The hermit," remarked the senator, "has without informing you of it,
linked an invisible spirit to the calculus he has taught you, for simple
numbers can not have the power of reason. You possess a real treasure,
and you may derive great advantages from it."

"I do not know," I said, "in what way I could make my science useful,
because the answers given by the numerical figures are often so obscure
that I have felt discouraged, and I very seldom tried to make any use of
my calculus. Yet, it is very true that, if I had not formed my pyramid, I
never should have had the happiness of knowing your excellency."

"How so?"

"On the second day, during the festivities