e
matter a good deal of thought.

I dressed myself and went to see Esther, whom I had to convince of the
divinity of my oracle, a different task with one whose own wits had told
her so much concerning my methods. This was the problem she gave me to
solve,

"Your oracle must tell me something which I, and only I, know."

Feeling that it would be impossible to fulfil these conditions, I told
her that the oracle might reveal some secret she might not care to have
disclosed.

"That is impossible," she answered, "as the secret will be known only to
myself."

"But, if the oracle replies I shall know the answer as well as you, and
it may be something you would not like me to know."

"There is no such thing, and, even if there were, if the oracle is not
your own brain you can always find out anything you want to know."

"But there is some limit to the powers of the oracle."

"You are making idle excuses; either prove that I am mistaken in my ideas
or acknowledge that my oracle is as good as yours."

This was pushing me hard, and I was on the point of declaring myself
conquered when a bright idea struck me.

In the midst of the dimple which added such a charm to her chin Esther
had a little dark mole, garnished with three or four extremely fine
hairs. These moles, which we call in Italian 'neo, nei', and which are
usually an improvement to the prettiest face, when they occur on the
face, the neck, the arms, or the hands, are duplicated on the
corresponding parts of the body. I concluded, therefore, that Esther had
a mole like that on her chin in a certain place which a virtuous girl
does not shew; and innocent as she was I suspected that she herself did
not know of this second mole's existence. "I shall astonish her," I said
to myself, "and establish my superiority in a manner which will put the
idea of having equal skill to mine out of her head for good." Then with
the solemn and far-away look of a seer I made my pyramid and extracted
these words from it,

"Fair and discreet Esther, no one knows that at the entrance of the
temple of love you have a mole precisely like that which appears on your
chin."

While I was working at my calculations, Esther was leaning over me and
following every movement. As she really knew as much about the cabala as
I did she did not want it to be explained to her, but translated the
numbers into letters as I wrote them down. As soon as I had extracted all
the combinations of numbers