II
Days, weeks, months had passed by, and Otto, a wanderer in a foreign land, had heard no tidings of his Aurelia. Ye who have loved may well conceive how her ring was all in all to him. He divided his time pretty equally between gazing into its cerulean depths, as though her lovely image were mirrored therein, and pressing its chilly surface to his lips, little as it recalled the warmth and balminess of hers.
The burnished glow of gold, the chaste sheen of silver, the dance and sparkle of light in multitudinous gems, arrested his attention as he one evening perambulated the streets of a great city. He beheld a jeweller’s shop. The grey-headed, spectacled lapidary sat at a bench within, sedulously polishing a streaked pebble by the light of a small lamp. A sudden thought struck Otto; he entered the shop, and, presenting the ring to the jeweller, inquired in a tone of suppressed exultation:
“What hold you for the worth of this inestimable ring?”
The jeweller, with no expression of surprise or curiosity, received the ring from Otto, held it to the light, glanced slightly at the stone, somewhat more carefully at the setting, laid the ring for a moment in a pair of light scales, and, handing it back to Otto, remarked with a tone and manner of the most entire indifference:
“The worth of this inestimable ring is one shilling and sixpence.”
“Caitiff of a huckster!” exclaimed Otto, bringing down his fist on the bench with such vigour that the pebbles leaped up and fell rattling down: “Sayest thou this of a gem framed by genii in the bowels of the earth?”
“Nay, friend,” returned the jeweller with the same imperturbable air, “that thy gem was framed of earth I in nowise question, seeing that it doth principally consist of sand. But when thou speakest of genii and the bowels of the earth, thou wilt not, I hope, take it amiss if I crave better proof than thy word that the devil has taken to glass-making. For glass, and nothing else, credit me, thy jewel is.”
“And the gold?” gasped Otto.
“There is just as much gold in thy ring as sufficeth to gild handsomely a like superficies of brass, which is not saying much.”
And, applying a sponge dipped in some liquid to a small part of the hoop, the jeweller disclosed the dull hue of the baser metal so evidently that Otto could hardly doubt longer. He doubted no more when the lapidary laid his ring in the scales against another of the same size and make, and pointed to the inequality of the balance.
“Thou seest,” he continued, “that in our craft a very little gold goes a very great way. It is far otherwise in the world, as thou, albeit in no sort eminent for sapience, hast doubtless ere this ascertained for thyself. Thou art evidently a prodigious fool!”
This latter disparaging observation could be safely ventured upon, as Otto had rushed from the shop, speechless with rage.
Was Aurelia deceiver or deceived? Should he execrate her, or her venerable grandmother, or some unknown person? The point was too knotty to be solved in the agitated state of his feelings. He decided it provisionally by execrating the entire human race, not forgetting himself.
In a mood like Otto’s a trifling circumstance is sufficient to determine the quality of action. The ancient city of which he was at the time an inhabitant was traversed by a large river spanned by a quaint and many-arched bridge, to which his frantic and aimless wanderings had conducted him. Spires and gables and lengthy façades were reflected in the water, blended with the shadows of boats, and interspersed with the mirrored flames of innumerable windows on land, or of lanterns suspended from the masts or sterns of the vessels. The dancing ripples bickered and flickered, and seemed to say, “Come hither to us,” while the dark reaches of still water in the shadow of the piers promised that whatever might be entrusted to them should be faithfully retained. Swayed by a sudden impulse, Otto drew his ring from his finger. It gleamed an instant aloft in air; in another the relaxation of his grasp would have consigned it to the stream.
“Forbear!”
Otto turned, and perceived a singular figure by his side. The stranger was tall and thin, and attired in a dusky cloak which only partially concealed a flame-coloured jerkin. A cock’s feather peaked up in his cap; his eyes were piercingly brilliant; his nose was aquiline; the expression of his features sinister and sardonic. Had Otto been more observant, or less preoccupied, he might have noticed that the stranger’s left shoe was of a peculiar form, and that he limped some little with the corresponding foot.
“Forbear, I say; thou knowest not what thou doest.”
“And what skills what I do with a piece of common glass?”
“Thou errest, friend; thy ring is not common glass. Had thy mistress surmised its mystic virtues, she would have thought oftener than twice ere exchanging it for thy diamond.”
“What may these virtues be?” eagerly demanded Otto.
“In the first place, it will show thee when thy mistress may chance to think of thee, as it will then prick thy finger.”
“Now I know thee for a lying knave,” exclaimed the youth indignantly. “Learn, to thy confusion, that it hath not pricked me once since I parted from Aurelia.”
“Which proves that she has never once thought of thee.”
“Villain!” shouted Otto, “say that again, and I will transfix thee.”
“Thou mayest if thou canst,” rejoined the stranger, with an expression of such cutting scorn that Otto’s spirit quailed, and he felt a secret but overpowering conviction of his interlocutor’s veracity. Rallying, however, in some measure, he exclaimed:
“Aurelia is true! I will wager my soul upon it!”
“Done!” screamed the stranger in a strident voice of triumph, while a burst of diabolical laughter seemed to proceed from every cranny of the eaves and piers of the old bridge, and to be taken up by goblin echoes from the summits of the adjacent towers and steeples.
Otto’s blood ran chill, but he mustered sufficient courage to inquire hoarsely:
“What of its further virtues?”
“When it shall have pricked thee,” returned the mysterious personage, “on turning it once completely round thy finger thou wilt see thy mistress wherever she may be. If thou turnest it the second time, thou wilt know what her thought of thee is; and, if the third time, thou wilt find thyself in her presence. But I give thee fair warning that by doing this thou wilt place thyself in a more disastrous plight than any thou hast experienced hitherto. And now farewell.”
The speaker disappeared. Otto stood alone upon the bridge. He saw nothing around him but the stream, with its shadows and lights, as he slowly and thoughtfully turned round to walk to his lodgings.