lowed them. I see destiny as a traveller sees a landscape by
fitful flashes of lightning at night, great tracts of country suddenly
displayed in all the blaze of noonday, but lost to sight the next moment
forever! Such humble powers as these are, I am well aware, unworthy to
bear competition with your more cultivated gifts; but if, with all
their imperfections, you are disposed to accept their exercise, they are
sincerely at your service."

The Chevalier, I suspect, acceded to this proposal in the belief that it
was an effort on my part to turn the topic from myself to _him_, for
he neither seemed to believe in my skill, nor feel any interest in its
exercise.

Affecting to follow implicitly the old Moorish woman's precepts, I
prepared myself for my task by putting on a great mantle with a hood,
which, when drawn forward, effectually concealed the wearer's face.
This was a precaution I took the better to study his face, while my own
remained hid from view.

"You are certainly far more imposing as a prophet than I can pretend to
be," said he, laughing, as he lighted a cigar, and lay back indolently
to await my revelations. I made a great display of knowledge in
shuffling and arranging the cards, the better to think over what I was
about; and at last, disposing some dozen in certain mystic positions
before me, I began.

"You startled _me_, Chevalier, by a discovery which only wanted truth
to make it very remarkable. Let me now repay _you_ by another which I
shrewdly suspect to be in the same condition. There are four cards now
before me, whose meaning is most positive, and which distinctly assert
that you, Chevalier de la Boutonerie, are no chevalier at all!"

"This is capital." said he, filling out a glass of wine and drinking it
off with the most consummate coolness.

"And here," said I, not heeding his affected ease,--"here is another
still stranger revelation, which says that you are not a Frenchman, but
a native of a land which latterly has taken upon it to supply the rest
of the world with adventurers,--in plain words, a Pole."

"It is true that my father, who held a command in the Imperial army,
lived some years in that country," said he, hastily; "but I have yet to
learn that he forfeited his nationality by so doing."

[Introduction: 507-158]

"I only know what the cards tell me," said I, spreading out a mass of
them before me, and pretending to study them attentively; "and here is a
complication which w