Or have you disgraced yourself?”
“If I meant to be disgraced, I should live.”
“You have been hissed perhaps at the Funambules? Or you have had to compose couplets to pay for your mistress’ funeral? Do you want to be cured of the gold fever? Or to be quit of the spleen? For what blunder is your life forfeit?”
“You must not look among the common motives that impel suicides for the reason of my death. To spare myself the task of disclosing my unheard-of sufferings, for which language has no name, I will tell you this – that I am in the deepest, most humiliating, and most cruel trouble, and,” he went on in proud tones that harmonized ill with the words just uttered, “I have no wish to beg for either help or sympathy.”
“Eh! eh!”
The two syllables which the old man pronounced resembled the sound of a rattle. Then he went on thus:
“Without compelling you to entreat me, without making you blush for it, and without giving you so much as a French centime, a para from the Levant, a German heller, a Russian kopeck, a Scottish farthing, a single obolus or sestertius from the ancient world, or one piastre from the new, without offering you anything whatever in gold, silver, or copper, notes or drafts, I will make you richer, more powerful, and of more consequence than a constitutional king.”
The young man thought that the older was in his dotage, and waited in bewilderment without venturing to reply.
“Turn round,” said the merchant, suddenly catching up the lamp in order to light up the opposite wall; “look at that leathern skin,” he went on.
The young man rose abruptly, and showed some surprise at the sight of a piece of shagreen which hung on the wall behind his chair. It was only about the size of a fox’s skin, but it seemed to fill the deep shadows of the place with such brilliant rays that it looked like a small comet, an appearance at first sight inexplicable. The young sceptic went up to this so-called talisman, which was to rescue him from all points of view, and he soon found out the cause of its singular brilliancy. The dark grain of the leather had been so carefully burnished and polished, the striped markings of the graining were so sharp and clear, that every particle of the surface of the bit of Oriental leather was in itself a focus which concentrated the light, and reflected it vividly.
He accounted for this phenomenon categorically to the old man, who only smiled meaningly by way of answer. His superior smile led the young scientific man to fancy that he himself had been deceived by some imposture. He had no wish to carry one more puzzle to his grave, and hastily turned the skin over, like some child eager to find out the mysteries of a new toy.
“Ah,” he cried, “here is the mark of the seal which they call in the East the Signet of Solomon.”
“So you know that, then?” asked the merchant. His peculiar method of laughter, two or three quick breathings through the nostrils, said more than any words however eloquent.
“Is there anybody in the world simple enough to believe in that idle fancy?” said the young man, nettled by the spitefulness of the silent chuckle. “Don’t you know,” he continued, “that the superstitions of the East have perpetuated the mystical form and the counterfeit characters of the symbol, which represents a mythical dominion? I have no more laid myself open to a charge of credulity in this case, than if I had mentioned sphinxes or griffins, whose existence mythology in a manner admits.”
“As you are an Orientalist,” replied the other, “perhaps you can read that sentence.”
He held the lamp close to the talisman, which the young man held towards him, and pointed out some characters inlaid in the surface of the wonderful skin, as if they had grown on the animal to which it once belonged.
“I must admit,” said the stranger, “that I have no idea how the letters could be engraved so deeply on the skin of a wild ass.” And he turned quickly to the tables strewn with curiosities and seemed to look for something.
“What is it that you want?” asked the old man.
“Something that will cut the leather, so that I can see whether the letters are printed or inlaid.”
The old man held out his stiletto. The stranger took it and tried to cut the skin above the lettering; but when he had removed a thin shaving of leather from them, the characters still appeared below, so clear and so exactly like the surface impression, that for a moment he was not sure that he had cut anything away after all.
“The craftsmen of the Levant have secrets known only to themselves,” he said, half in vexation, as he eyed the characters of this Oriental sentence.
“Yes,” said the old man, “it is better to attribute it to man’s agency than to God’s.”
The mysterious words were thus arranged:
[Drawing of apparently Sanskrit characters omitted]
Or, as it runs in English:
POSSESSING ME THOU SHALT POSSESS ALL THINGS.
BUT THY LIFE IS MINE, FOR GOD HAS SO WILLED IT.
WISH, AND THY WISHES SHALL BE FULFILLED;
BUT MEASURE THY DESIRES, ACCORDING
TO THE LIFE THAT IS IN THEE.
THIS IS THY LIFE,
WITH EACH WISH I MUST SHRINK
EVEN AS THY OWN DAYS.
WILT THOU HAVE ME? TAKE ME.
GOD WILL HEARKEN UNTO THEE.
SO BE IT!
“So you read Sanskrit fluently,” said the old man. “You have been in Persia perhaps, or in Bengal?”
“No, sir,” said the stranger, as he felt the emblematical skin curiously. It was almost as rigid as a sheet of metal.
The old merchant set the lamp back again upon the column, giving the other a look as he did so. “He has given up the notion of dying already,” the glance said with phlegmatic irony.
“Is it a jest, or is it an enigma?” asked the younger man.
The other shook his head and said soberly:
“I don’t know how to answer you. I have offered this talisman with its terrible powers to men with more energy in them than you seem to me to have; but though they laughed at the questionable power it might exert over their futures, not one of them was ready to venture to conclude the fateful contract proposed by an unknown force. I am of their opinion, I have doubted and refrained, and – ”
“Have you never even tried its power?” interrupted the young stranger.
“Tried it!” exclaimed the old man. “Suppose that you were on the column in the Place Vendome, would you try flinging yourself into space? Is it possible to stay the course of life? Has a man ever been known to die by halves? Before you came here, you had made up your mind to kill yourself, but all at once a mystery fills your mind, and you think no more about death. You child! Does not any one day of your life afford mysteries more absorbing? Listen to me. I saw the licentious days of Regency. I was like you, then, in poverty; I have begged my bread; but for all that, I am now a centenarian with a couple of years to spare, and a millionaire to boot. Misery was the making
