ast and
mournful aspect.

"What has happened?" asked the Englishman: "you seem sad,--you do not
greet me as usual."

"I have been with the stars," replied the visionary.

"They seem but poor company," rejoined the Englishman; "and do not
appear to have much heightened your spirits."

"Jest not, my friend," said Volktman; "it was for the loss of thee I
looked sorrowful. I perceive that thou wilt take a journey soon, and
that it will be of no pleasant nature."

"Indeed!" answered the Englishman, smilingly. "I ask leave to question
the fact: you know better than any man how often, through an error
in our calculations, through haste, even through an over-attention,
astrological predictions are exposed to falsification; and at present I
foresee so little chance of my quitting Rome, that I prefer the earthly
probabilities to the celestial."

"My schemes are just, and the Heavens wrote their decrees in their
clearest language," answered the astrologer. "Thou art on the eve of
quitting Rome."

"On what occasion?"

The astrologer hesitated--the young visitor pressed the question.

"The lord of the fourth house," said Volktman, reluctantly, "is located
in the eleventh house. Thou knowest to whom the position portends
disaster."

"My father!" said the Englishman, anxiously, and turning pale; "I think
that position would relate to him."

"It doth," said the astrologer, slowly.

"Impossible! I heard from him to-day; he is well--let me see the
figures."

The young man looked over the mystic hieroglyphics of the art,
inscribed on a paper that was placed before the visionary, with deep and
scrutinising attention. Without bewildering the reader with those words
and figures of weird sound and import which perplex the uninitiated, and
entangle the disciple of astrology, I shall merely observe that there
was one point in which the judgment appeared to admit doubt as to the
signification. The Englishman insisted on the doubt; and a very learned
and edifying debate was carried on between pupil and master, in the heat
of which all recollection of the point in dispute (as is usual in such
cases) evaporated.

"I know not how it is," said the Englishman, "that I should give any
credence to a faith which (craving your forgiveness) most men out of
Bedlam concur, at this day, in condemning as wholly idle and absurd.
For it may be presumed that men only incline to some unpopular theory
in proportion as it flatters or favours them