mness, heightened by the understanding manner that is so peculiar to a
seaman when afloat."

"Wilt thou have the history of thy coming perils, friend mariner?" cried
the mercurial mountebank: "A journal of thy future risks and tempests to
amuse you in this calm? Such a picture of sea-monsters and of coral that
grows in the ocean's caverns, where mariners sleep, that shall give thee
the night-mare for months, and cause thee to dream of wrecks and bleached
bones for the rest of thy life? Thou hast only to wish it, to have the
adventures of thy next voyage laid before thee, like a map."

"Thou would'st gain more credit with me, as one cunning in thy art, by
giving the history of the last."

"The request is reasonable, and thou shalt have it: for I love the bold
adventurer that trusts himself hardily upon the great deep;" answered the
unabashed Pippo. "My first lessons in necromancy were received on the mole
of Napoli, amid burly Inglesi, straight-nosed Greeks, swarthy Sicilians,
and Maltese with spirits as fine as the gold of their own chains. This was
the school in which I learned to know my art, and an apt scholar I proved
in all that touches the philosophy and humanity of my craft. Signore, thy
palm?"

Maso spread his sinewy hand in the direction of the juggler, without
descending from his elevation, and in a way to show that, while he would
not balk the common humor, he was superior to the gaping wonder and
childish credulity of most of those who watched the result. Pippo affected
to stretch out his neck, in order to study the hard and dark lines, and
then he resumed his revelations, like one perfectly satisfied with what he
had discovered.

"The hand is masculine, and has been familiar with many friends in its
time. It hath dealt with steel, and cordage, and saltpetre, and most of
all with gold. Signori, the true seat of a man's digestion lies in the
palm of his hand; if that is free to give and to receive, he will never
have a costive conscience, for of all damnable inconveniences that afflict
mortals, that of a conscience that will neither give up nor take is the
heaviest curse. Let a man have as much sagacity as shall make him a
cardinal, if it get entangled in the meshes of one of your unyielding
consciences, ye shall see him a mendicant brother to his dying day; let
him be born a prince with a close-ribbed opinion of this sort, and he had
better have been born a beggar, for his reign will be like a river from