ave heard wild tales of thy grandsire;
of his desire for a knowledge that passes that of the schools and
cloisters; of a strange man from the East who was his familiar and
master in lore against which the Vatican has, from age to age,
launched its mimic thunder? Dost thou call to mind the fortunes of thy
ancestor?--how he succeeded in youth to little but a name; how, after a
career wild and dissolute as thine, he disappeared from Milan, a pauper,
and a self-exile; how, after years spent, none knew in what climes or
in what pursuits, he again revisited the city where his progenitors had
reigned; how with him came the wise man of the East, the mystic Mejnour;
how they who beheld him, beheld with amaze and fear that time had
ploughed no furrow on his brow; that youth seemed fixed, as by a spell,
upon his face and form? Dost thou not know that from that hour his
fortunes rose? Kinsmen the most remote died; estate upon estate fell
into the hands of the ruined noble. He became the guide of princes, the
first magnate of Italy. He founded anew the house of which thou art the
last lineal upholder, and transferred his splendour from Milan to the
Sicilian realms. Visions of high ambition were then present with him
nightly and daily. Had he lived, Italy would have known a new dynasty,
and the Visconti would have reigned over Magna-Graecia. He was a man
such as the world rarely sees; but his ends, too earthly, were at war
with the means he sought. Had his ambition been more or less, he had
been worthy of a realm mightier than the Caesars swayed; worthy of our
solemn order; worthy of the fellowship of Mejnour, whom you now behold
before you."

The prince, who had listened with deep and breathless attention to the
words of his singular guest, started from his seat at his last words.
"Imposter!" he cried, "can you dare thus to play with my credulity?
Sixty years have flown since my grandsire died; were he living, he had
passed his hundred and twentieth year; and you, whose old age is
erect and vigorous, have the assurance to pretend to have been his
contemporary! But you have imperfectly learned your tale. You know not,
it seems, that my grandsire, wise and illustrious indeed, in all save
his faith in a charlatan, was found dead in his bed, in the very hour
when his colossal plans were ripe for execution, and that Mejnour was
guilty of his murder."

"Alas!" answered the stranger, in a voice of great sadness, "had he
but listened to M