except
the distant music of the departing regiments dying away on the air. "I
will teach thee to live in eternity!" resumed the Italian, solemnly.
"My predecessor the apostle, George Schrepfer, has initiated thee in
temporal life, and the knowledge of the present. By the pistol-shot,
which disclosed to him the invisible world, and removed him from our
earthly eyes, has he to thee, his most faithful and believing disciple,
given the great doctrine of the decay of all things earthly, and
prepared thee for the doctrine of the imperishableness of the celestial.
The original of humanity sends me, to make known to thee this holy
doctrine. When I met thee in Dresden, at the side of the Countess
Dorothea von Medem, thee, whom I had never seen, I recognized by the
blue flame which trembled above thy head, and which was nothing else
than the soul of thy teacher, Schrepfer, wrestling in anguish, which has
remained with thee, and hopes for delivery from thee. I greeted thee,
therefore, not as a stranger but as a friend. No one called thy name,
and yet it was known to me. I took thee by the hand, greeting thee. Hans
Rudolph von Bischofswerder, be welcome. The blue flame which glows
upon thy brow, guides me to thee, and the pistol-shot under the oaks
centuries old, at Rosenthal, near Leipsic, was the summons which my
spirit received among the pyramids of Egypt, and which recalled me
to Europe, to my own, and thou art one of them."[Footnote: George
Schrepfer, the founder of the Secret Free Mason Lodge (at the same
time proprietor of a restaurant and a conjuror), invited his intimate
disciples and believers in the year 1774, to whom Bischofswerder
belonged, to meet him at Rosenthal, near Leipsic. He assembled them
around him, beneath some old oaks, to take leave of them, as now he
would render himself in the invisible realm, whence, as a spirit, he
would distribute to some of his disciples gold, to others wisdom. He
then commanded them to conceal their faces and pray. The praying ones
suddenly heard a loud report, and, as they looked up Schrepfer fell
dead. He had shot himself with a pistol.]

"And as thou spakest, oh master, I recognized thee, and I called--' Thou
art here, who hast been announced to me. Thou art the master, and my
master Schrepfer was the prophet, who preceded thee and prophesied thee.
Thou art the great Kophta--thou art Count Alexander Cagliostro!' As
I uttered the name, the lights were extinguished, deep darkness a