ould need a cleverer expositor than I am. Of all
the tangled webs ever I essayed to unravel, this is the knottiest. Why,
really, Chevalier, yours must have been a life of more than ordinary
vicissitude, or else my prophetic skill has suffered sadly from disuse."

"Judging from what you have just told me, I rather lean to the latter
explanation," said he, swallowing down two glasses of wine with great
rapidity.

"I suspect such to be the case, indeed," said I, "for otherwise I could
scarcely have such difficulty in reading these mystic signs, once so
familiar to me, and from which I can now only pick up a stray phrase
here and there. Thus I see what implies a high diplomatic employment,
and yet, immediately after, I perceive that this is either a mistake of
mine, or the thing itself a cheat and a deception."

"It surely does not require divination to tell a diplomatic agent that
he has served on a foreign mission," said the Chevalier, with a sneer.

"Perhaps not, but I see here vestiges of strange occurrences in which
this fact is concerned. A fleeting picture passes now before my eyes:
I see a race-course, with its crowds of people and its throng of
carriages, and the horses are led out to be saddled, and all is
expectation and eagerness, and--what! This is most singular! the vision
has passed away, and I am looking at two figures who stand side by side
in a richly furnished room, a man and a woman. _She_ is weeping, and
_he_ consoling her. Stay! He lifts his head--the man is yourself,
Chevalier!"

"Indeed!" said he; but this time the word was uttered in a faint voice,
while a pallor that was almost lividness colored his dark features.

"She murmurs a name; I almost caught it," exclaimed I, as if
carried away by the rapt excitement of prophecy. "Yes! I hear it now
perfectly,--the name is Alexis!"

A fearful oath burst from the Chevalier, and with a bound lie sprung to
his feet, and dashed his closed fists against his brow. "Away with
your jugglery, have done with your miserable cheat, sir,--that can only
terrify women and children. Speak out like a man: who are you, and what
are you?"

"What means this outrage, sir? How have you forgotten yourself so far
as to _use_ this language to _me?_" said I, throwing back the mantle and
standing full before him.

"Let us have no more acting, sir, whether it be as prophet or bully,"
said he, sternly. "You affect to know _me_, who I am, and whence I have
come. Make the ga