in general. Your highness' self is the best proof of the insufficiency
of his plan, if indeed he ever had one."

"Perhaps he has been mistaken in respect to myself," said the prince;
"but his conclusions have nevertheless been well founded. Could he
foresee that I should exactly notice the very circumstance which
threatens to become the key to the whole artifice? Was it in his plan
that the creature he employed should render himself thus vulnerable?
Are we certain that the Sicilian has not far exceeded his commission?
He has undoubtedly done so with respect to the ring, and yet it is
chiefly this single circumstance which determined my distrust in him.
How easily may a plan, whose contexture is most artful and refined, be
spoiled in the execution by an awkward instrument. It certainly was not
the Armenian's intention that the sorcerer should trumpet his fame to us
in the style of a mountebank, that he should endeavor to impose upon us
such fables as are too gross to bear the least reflection. For
instance, with what countenance could this impostor affirm that the
miraculous being he spoke of must renounce all commerce with mankind at
twelve in the night? Did we not see him among us at that very hour?"

"That is true," cried I. "He must have forgotten it."

"It often happens, to people of this description, that they overact
their parts; and, by aiming at too much, mar the effects which a
well-managed deception is calculated to produce."

"I cannot, however, yet prevail on myself to look upon the whole as a
mere preconcerted scheme. What! the Sicilian's terror, his convulsive
fits, his swoon, the deplorable situation in which we saw him, and which
was even such as to move our pity, were all these nothing more than a