“If not very veracious,” said I, “it is at least very amusing. Pray continue.”
“What would the old counts of your ancestry have said to such a profanation?” cried the Chevalier. “By Saint Denis, I would not have been the man to asperse their blood thus, in their old halls at Grenada!”
“We live in a less haughty age,” said I, affecting a smile of indifference, and motioning to him to proceed.
“What follows is the very commonest of that nonsense which is revealed in all lowly fortunes. You are, as usual, the victim of cold and hunger, suffering from destitution and want. Then there are indications of a bold spirit, ambitious and energetic, bursting out through all the gloom of your dark condition, and a small whispered word in your ear, tells you to hope!” While the Chevalier rattled out this “rodomontade” at a much greater length than I have time or patience to repeat, his eyes never quitted me, but seemed to sparkle with a fiend-like intelligence of what was passing within me. As he concluded, he mixed up the cards together, merely muttering, half aloud, “adventures and escapes by land and sea. Abundance of hard luck, to be all compensated for one day, when wealth in all its richest profusion is showered upon you.” Then, dashing the cards from him in affected anger, he said, “It is enough to make men despise themselves, the way in which they yield credence to such rank tomfoolery! but I assure you, Count, however contemptible the oracle has shown herself to-day, I have on more than one occasion been present at the most startling revelations,—not alone as regarded the past, but the future also.”
“I can easily believe it, Chevalier,” replied I, with a great effort to seem philosophically calm. “One must not reject everything that has not the stamp of reason upon it; and even what I have listened to to-day, absurd as it is, has not shaken my faith in the divination of the cards. Perhaps this fancy of mine is the remnant of a childish superstition, which I owe in great part to my old nurse. She was a Moor by birth, and imbued with all the traditions and superstitions of her own romantic land.”
There was a most sneering expression on the Chevalier's face as I uttered these words. I paid no attention to it, however, but went on: “From the venerable dame I myself attained to some knowledge of 'destiny reading,' of which I remember once or twice in life to have afforded very singular proofs. My skill, however, usually preferred unravelling the 'future' to the 'present.'”
“Speculation is always easier than recital,” said the Chevalier, dryly.
“Very true,” said I; “and in reading the past I have ever found how want of sufficient skill has prevented my giving to the great fact of a story the due and necessary connection; so that, indeed, I appear as if distinct events alone were revealed to me, without clew to what preceded or followed them. I see destiny as a traveller sees a landscape by fitful flashes of lightning at night, great tracts of country suddenly displayed in all the blaze of noonday, but lost to sight the next moment forever! Such humble powers as these are, I am well aware, unworthy to bear competition with your more cultivated gifts; but if, with all their imperfections, you are disposed to accept their exercise, they are sincerely at your service.”
The Chevalier, I suspect, acceded to this proposal in the belief that it was an effort on my part to turn the topic from myself to him, for he neither seemed to believe in my skill, nor feel any interest in its exercise.
Affecting to follow implicitly the old Moorish woman's precepts, I prepared myself for my task by putting on a great mantle with a hood, which, when drawn forward, effectually concealed the wearer's face. This was a precaution I took the better to study his face, while my own remained hid from view.