d grown somewhat quieter; they could pursue their way with
less hinderance. At dusk they came into the allies which pass close
behind the tomb of Augustus. They walkt through a little garden; a
friendly light glimmered upon them from the windows of a small house.
They pulled the bell; the door opened; and full of the strangest and
highest expectations Antonio entered with his friend into the hall.

* * * * *

Antonio was surprised at seeing before him a simple-mannered
middle-sized young man, who from his appearance could not be much
above thirty years old. With an unaffected air he greeted the youth on
his entrance like an old acquaintance.

"Be welcome!" said he with a pleasing voice: "your Spanish friend has
told me much good of you, so that I have long lookt forward with
pleasure to becoming acquainted with you. Only you must by no means
fancy that you are come to one of the sages, to an adept, or forsooth
to a man before whom hell trembles in its foundations: you will find
me a mere mortal, such as you yourself are and may become, as may
every man whom such graver studies, and retirement from the vain
tumult of the world, do not scare away."

Antonio felt comfortable and at ease, greatly as he was astonisht: he
cast his eyes round the room, which beside a few books and a lute
displayed nothing out of the way. In his own mind he compared this
little house and its straightforward inmate with the palace and the
pomp, the instruments and the mysteries, of his former teacher, and
said: "In truth one sees no traces here of that high and hidden
knowledge which my friend has been extolling to me, and in which you
are said to be infallible."

Castalio laught heartily, and then replied: "No, my young friend, not
infallible; no mortal can go so far as that. Only look around you;
this is my sitting-room; there in that little chamber stands my bed: I
have neither space nor means for hiding any instruments of fraud, or
setting any artificial machinery in action. All those circles and
glasses, those celestial globes and maps of the stars, which your
conjurers need for their tricks, would find no room here: and those
poor creatures after all are only deluded by the spirit of falsehood,
because they will not labour to learn the powers of their own minds.
He however who descends into the depths of his own soul, with humility
and a pious disposition to guide him, he who is in earnest in wishing
to