brass and gold. The paper is a map of the heavens; and he sits there
watching the stars, marking them in position on the map, the clock
telling him the exact time."

"An astronomer," said Sergius.

"And an astrologer," she added; "and besides these things he is a doctor,
but goes only amongst the poor, taking nothing from them. He is also a
chemist; and he has tables of the plants curative and deadly, and can
extract their qualities, and reduce them from fluids to solids, and
proportionate them. He is also a master of figures, a science, he always
terms it, the first of creative principles without which God could not
be God. So, too, he is a traveller--indeed I think he has been over the
known world. You cannot speak of a capital or of an island, or a tribe
which he has not visited. He has servants from the farthest East. One of
his attendants is an African King; and what is the strangest to me,
Sergius, his domestics are all deaf and dumb."

"Impossible!"

"Nothing appears impossible to him."

"How does he communicate with them?"

"They catch his meaning from the motion of his lips. He says signs are
too slow and uncertain for close explanations."

"Still he must resort to some language."

"Oh, yes, the Greek."