‘I will tell you more,’ continued Exili, still fixing his scrutinising gaze upon the amulet. ‘The names of the four angels are graven round it: they come in order thus—Uriel, Raphael, Michael, Gabriel. I have seen that stone before. Where did you get it?’
‘It matters little to you,’ replied Gaudin; ‘suffice it to say it is my own.’
‘And you did not read your arrest on its surface?’
‘I have kept it merely as a charm,’ answered Gaudin.
‘Then you have abused its power,’ continued Exili. ‘Listen! do you hear the night wind howling round the towers of the Bastille and rushing down the chimney of our apartment? To common ears it is but the wind—a viewless thing that comes and goes, hurrying on around the world until its force is spent and it dies in nothingness. To me it is far otherwise,’ he continued, as his eyes blazed with unwonted fire, and he raised his arm on high. ‘Each gust is laden with the wrath of some damned spirit waiting to be called upon to make that beryl a mirror of the future, and you neglect the appeal. Give me the stone, and let me read the fate you care not to know.’
Gaudin gazed at Exili with fixed astonishment. The physician extended his hand, and the other took the amulet from his neck and gave it to him.
‘It is the same!’ exclaimed Exili with a smothered exclamation of surprise, as he again looked intently at Gaudin. Then, fixing his eye on the stone, he continued—
‘Its surface is dull. I can see forms moving on it, but they are indistinct, and dance from before my sight like motes, all except your own, and that remains. You may yet triumph.’
Gaudin was awed by the manner of Exili; at another time he would have laughed his predictions to scorn, but the circumstances, the hour, and the place, combined to make him think very seriously of his companion’s remarks.
‘What do you mean?’ he asked.