ferruginous rock, stuck with pieces of dirty glass; and it had
burned Sante on the midnight of the asteroid's scattering.

"Imagine my excitement: 'The asteroid', I thought, 'may add fifty
thousand Jews to the Church'. I asked Sante for the stone--Do you
blame me?"

"Go on," said Hogarth.

"That day two months I had the diamonds lying polished in a casket
in my house. My evil destiny, Hogarth, ordained that the casket was
the one given me for Paris by the Pope, the number of the new
diamonds the same--seven: and one day, about that time, the Vatican
organ, the _Osservatore Romano_, published a dreadful article,
hinting that I had applied to my own purposes seven diamonds
entrusted me for Paris: the Pope, just dead, must have left some
record of his gift. My friend, before I had heard a whisper of the
attack upon me, the casket, whose lid was mosaicked with the Papal
fanon, was secretly searched by a secretary in my house: the seven
diamonds were seen.

"Imagine the horror of what followed: I was abandoned by all--
superior and inferior; the story of the meteor was received with
sneers. The scandal reached the public papers--the public
prosecutor. And here now is the wretch, Patrick O'Hara."

The latter part of this narrative was fiction! The Pope's diamonds
O'Hara had duly handed to the Archbishop! and though there was such
a man as Sante, no asteroid had ever fallen at his door. In fact,
O'Hara was "serving time" for an assault upon a lady in a railway