us, simple-hearted, nay childlike, as he is, every look of
his eye pours the light of confidence into you."

"And how was it with Apone?" Antonio threw in.

"He," replied his friend, "always wanted to be coming forward in the
light of a supernatural being: he was evermore labouring, consciously
and purposely, to appear as a messenger from Heaven, and with
counterfeit splendour to dazzle the ordinary sons of men. He delighted
in pomp; he would indeed be condescending at times, but it was only to
make the enormous distance between him and us more palpably felt. Did
he not revel in the admiration which the nobles and citizens, the
young and old, were all forced to pay him? But my present friend (for
such he is, because he renders himself altogether my equal) has no
wish to seem great and sublime: he smiles at the endeavours of so many
men to do so, and considers this of itself as an assurance that there
is something spurious and hollow to be concealed; since a clear
consciousness of worth would only wish to pass for what it feels
itself to be, and the wisest of mortals must after all acknowledge
that he too, as well as the most ignorant vagabond, is merely a child
of the dust."

"You make me curious;" said Antonio: "so he knows both what is past
and what is to come? the destinies of men? and could tell me how happy
or unhappy the cast of my future life is to be? whether certain secret
wishes can be accomplisht? Would he then be able to decipher and
divine such parts of my history as are obscure even to myself?"

"It is in this very thing that his wisdom lies," answered Alfonso with
enthusiasm; "by means of letters and numbers, in the simplest and most
harmless way, he finds out everything for which those wretches have to
employ conjurations and charms and yells and screams and the agonies
of death. Hence too you will find none of that odious magical
apparatus about him, no crystals with spirits blockt up in them, no
mirrors and skeletons, no incense, and no nauseous imps: he has all
his stores in himself. I told him about you; and he found out by his
calculations that I was quite sure of meeting you today at this hour
on the steps of the Lateran church. And so it has turned out at the
very instant he foretold."

Antonio was desirous of becoming acquainted with this wonderfully
gifted old man, in the hope of learning his destiny from him. They
dined in a garden, and toward evening went back to the city. The
streets ha