beside our table, watching me use ruler and compass with unwonted
attention.

"I wish I could draw," he said; "but I can do nothing useful."

"Rich men like you," said Strahan, peevishly, "can engage others, and are
better employed in rewarding good artists than in making bad drawings
themselves."

"Yes, I can employ others; and--Fenwick, when you have finished with
Strahan I will ask permission to employ you, though without reward; the
task I would impose will not take you a minute."

He then threw himself back in his chair, and seemed to fall into a doze.

The dressing-bell rang; Strahan put away the plans,--indeed, they were now
pretty well finished and decided on. Margrave woke up as our host left
the room to dress, and drawing me towards another table in the room,
placed before me one of his favourite mystic books, and, pointing to an
old woodcut, said,

"I will ask you to copy this for me; it pretends to be a facsimile of
Solomon's famous seal. I have a whimsical desire to have a copy of it.
You observe two triangles interlaced and inserted in a circle?--the
pentacle, in short. Yes, just so. You need not add the astrological
characters: they are the senseless superfluous accessories of the dreamer
who wrote the book. But the pentacle itself has an intelligible meaning;
it belongs to the only universal language, the language of symbol, in
which all races that think--around, and above, and below us--can establish
communion of thought. If in the external universe any one constructive