fascinated her childhood with simulated phantoms. To them Margrave is,
perhaps, an enthusiast, but, because an enthusiast, not less an impostor.
"L'Homme se pique," says Charron. Man cogs the dice for himself ere he
rattles the box for his dupes. Was there ever successful impostor who did
not commence by a fraud on his own understanding? Cradled in Orient
Fableland, what though Margrave believes in its legends; in a wand, an
elixir; in sorcerers or Afrites? That belief in itself makes him keen to
detect, and skilful to profit by, the latent but kindred credulities of
others. In all illustrations of Duper and Duped through the records of
superstition--from the guile of a Cromwell, a Mahomet, down to the cheats
of a gypsy--professional visionaries are amongst the astutest observers.
The knowledge that Margrave had gained of my abode, of my affliction, or
of the innermost thoughts in my mind, it surely demanded no preternatural
aids to acquire. An Old Bailey attorney could have got at the one, and
any quick student of human hearts have readily mastered the other. In
fine, Margrave, thus rationally criticised, is no other prodigy (save in
degree and concurrence of attributes simple, though not very common) than
may be found in each alley that harbours a fortune-teller who has just
faith enough in the stars or the cards to bubble himself while he swindles
his victims; earnest, indeed, in the self-conviction that he is really a
seer, but reading the looks of his listeners, divining the thoughts that
induce them to listen, and acquiring by practice a startling ability to
judge what the listeners will deem it most seer-like to read in the cards
or divine from the stars.


I leave this interpretation unassailed. It is that which is the most
probable; it is clearly that which, in a case not my own, I should have
accepted; and yet I revolved and dismissed it. The moment we deal with
things beyond our comprehension, and in which our own senses are appealed