e can have no motives for doing this because
I am unable to comprehend them. Do I know who has bribed him to deceive
me? I confess I cannot penetrate the whole contexture of his plan; but
he has certainly done a material injury to the cause he advocates by
proving himself to be at least an impostor, and perhaps something
worse."

"The circumstance of the ring, I allow, appears somewhat suspicions."

"It is more than suspicious," answered the prince; "it is decisive. He
received this ring from the murderer, and at the moment he received it
he must have been certain that it was from the murderer. Who but the
assassin, could have taken from the finger of the deceased a ring which
he undoubtedly never took off himself? Throughout the whole of his
narration the Sicilian has labored to persuade us that while he was
endeavoring to deceive Lorenzo, Lorenzo was in reality deceiving him.
Would he have had recourse to this subterfuge if he had not been
sensible how much he should lose in our estimation by confessing himself
an accomplice with the assassin? The whole story is visibly nothing but
a series of impostures, invented merely to connect the few truths he has
thought proper to give us. Ought I then to hesitate in disbelieving the
eleventh assertion of a person who has already deceived me ten times,
rather than admit a violation of the fundamental laws of nature, which I
have ever found in the most perfect harmony?"

"I have nothing to reply to all this, but the apparition we saw
yesterday is to me not the less incomprehensible."

"It is also incomprehensible to me, although I have been tempted to
believe that I have found a key to it."

"How so?" asked I.

"Do not you recollect that the second apparition, as soon as he entered,
walked directly up to the altar, took the crucifix in his hand, and
placed himself upon the carpet?"

"It appeared so to me."

"And this crucifix, according to the Sicilian's confession, was a
conductor. You see that the apparition hastened to make himself
electrical. Thus the blow which Lord Seymour struck him with a sword
was of course ineffectual; the electric stroke disabled his arm."

"This is true with respect to the sword. But the pistol fired by the
Sicilian, the ball of which we heard roll slowly upon the altar?"

"Are you convinced that this was the same ball which was fired from the
pistol?" replied the prince. "Not to mention that the puppet, or the
man who represented the gho