some service to their excellencies.

They all asked me how long I would require to teach them the rules of my
sublime calculus. "Not very long," I answered, "and I will teach you as
you wish, although the hermit assured me that I would die suddenly within
three days if I communicated my science to anyone, but I have no faith
whatever in that prediction." M. de Bragadin who believed in it more than
I did, told me in a serious tone that I was bound to have faith in it,
and from that day they never asked me again to teach them. They very
likely thought that, if they could attach me to them, it would answer the
purpose as well as if they possessed the science themselves. Thus I
became the hierophant of those three worthy and talented men, who, in
spite of their literary accomplishments, were not wise, since they were
infatuated with occult and fabulous sciences, and believed in the
existence of phenomena impossible in the moral as well as in the physical
order of things. They believed that through me they possessed the
philosopher's stone, the universal panacea, the intercourse with all the
elementary, heavenly, and infernal spirits; they had no doubt whatever
that, thanks to my sublime science, they could find out the secrets of
every government in Europe.

After they had assured themselves of the reality of my cabalistic science
by questions respecting the past, they decided to turn it to some use by
consulting it upon the present and upon the future. I had no difficulty
in skewing myself a good guesser, because I always gave answers with a
double meaning, one of the meanings being carefully arranged by me, so as
not to be understood until after the event; in that manner, my cabalistic
science, like the oracle of Delphi, could never be found in fault. I saw
how easy it must have been for the ancient heathen priests to impose upon
ignorant, and therefore credulous mankind. I saw how easy it will always