save, therefore I warn thee. Dost thou ask me why? I will tell
thee. Canst thou remember to have heard wild tales of thy grandsire,--of
his desire for a knowledge that passes that of the schools and
cloisters; of a strange man from the East, who was his familiar and
master in lore, against which the Vatican has from age to age
launched its mimic thunder? Dost thou call to mind the fortunes of thy
ancestor,--how he succeeded in youth to little but a name; how, after a
career wild and dissolute as thine, he disappeared from Milan, a pauper
and a self-exile; how, after years spent none knew in what climes or
in what pursuits, he again revisited the city where his progenitors
had reigned; how with him came this wise man of the East, the mystic
Mejnour; how they who beheld him, beheld with amaze and fear that time
had ploughed no furrow on his brow,--that youth seemed fixed as by a
spell upon his face and form? Dost thou know that from that hour his
fortunes rose? Kinsmen the most remote died, estate upon estate fell
into the hands of the ruined noble. He allied himself with the royalty
of Austria, he became the guide of princes, the first magnate of Italy.
He founded anew the house of which thou art the last lineal upholder,
and transferred its splendor from Milan to the Sicilian realms. Visions
of high ambition were then present with him nightly and daily. Had he
lived, Italy would have known a new dynasty, and the Visconti would have
reigned over Magna Graecia. He was a man such as the world rarely sees;
he was worthy to be of us, worthy to be the pupil of Mejnour,--whom you
now see before you."

The Prince, who had listened with deep and breathless attention to the
words of his singular guest, started from his seat at his last words.
"Impostor!" he cried, "can you dare thus to play with my credulity?
Sixty years have passed since my grandsire died; and you, a man younger
apparently than myself, have the assurance to pretend to have been his
contemporary! But you have imperfectly learned your tale. You know not,
it seems, that my grandsire--wise and illustrious, indeed, in all save
his faith in a charlatan--was found dead in his bed in the very hour
when his colossal plans were ripe for execution, and that Mejnour was
guilty of his murder?"

"Alas!" answered the stranger, in a voice of great sadness, "had he but
listened to Mejnour, had he delayed the last and most perilous ordeal
of daring wisdom until the requisite tra