A year after Brusson left Paris, a public proclamation, signed by Harloy de Chauvalon, Archbishop of Paris, and by Pierre Arnaud d'Andilly, Advocate of the Parliament, appeared, stating that a repentant sinner had, under seal of confession, made over to the Church a valuable stolen treasure of gold and jewels. All those who, up to about the end of the year 1680, had been robbed of property of this description, particularly if by murderous attack in the street, were directed to apply to d'Andilly, when they would receive it back, provided that anything in the said collection agreed with the description to be by them given, and providing that there was no doubt of the genuineness of the application. Many whose names occurred in Cardillac's list as having been merely stunned, not murdered, came from time to time to d'Andilly to reclaim their property, and received it back, to their no small surprise. The remainder became the property of the Church of St. Eustache."
Sylvester's tale was received by the Brethren with their full approval. It was held to be truly Serapiontic, because, whilst founded on historical fact, it yet soared into the region of the imaginative.
Lothair said: "Our Sylvester has got very well out of a somewhat risky undertaking, for that, I consider, was the representing of a literary old maid who kept a sort of bureau d'esprit in the Rue St. Honoré, which he lets us have a peep into. Our own authoresses (and if they chance to be advanced in years, I hope they may all be genial, kind, and dignified as the old lady in the black dress) would be much delighted with you, my Sylvester, if they heard your story, and forgive you your somewhat gruesome and terrible Cardillac, whom, I suppose, you have altogether to thank your own imagination for."
"At the same time," said Ottmar, "I remember having read, somewhere or other, of an old shoemaker in Venice, whom the whole town looked upon as a good, exemplary, industrious man, though he really was the most atrocious robber and murderer. Just like Cardillac, he used to slip out in the night-time and get into the palazzi of the great, where, in the depths of darkness, his surely-dealt dagger-thrust pierced the hearts of those whom he wanted to rob, so that they dropped down on the spot without a cry. Every effort of the most clever and observant police to detect this murderer, who kept all Venice in terror, was useless, until a circumstance led to the shoemaker's being suspected. He fell sick, and, strange to say, as long as he was confined to his bed there were no murders. They began again as soon as he was well. On some pretext he was put in prison, and, just as was expected, so long as he was shut up the palaces were in security; but the moment he got out (there being no proof of anything against him) the victims fell just as before. Finally the rack extracted his secret, and he was executed. A strange thing was that he had made no use whatever of the stolen property; it was all found stowed away under the flooring of his room. He said, in the naïvest manner, that he had made a vow to St. Rochus, the patron of his craft, that he would get together a certain, pretty considerable, sum by robbery, and then stop; and complained of the hardship of having been apprehended before the said sum was arrived at."
"I never heard of the Venetian shoemaker," said Sylvester; "but if I am truly to tell you the source from whence I drew, I must inform you that the words spoken by Mademoiselle Scuderi, 'Un amant qui craint les voleurs,' &c., were really made use of by her, in almost similar circumstances to those of my story. Also the affair of the offering from the band of robbers is by no means a creature of the brain of the felicitously inspired writer. The account of that you will find in a book where you certainly would not look for it, Wagenseil's 'Nuernberg Chronicle.' The old gentleman speaks of a visit he made to Mademoiselle Scuderi in Paris, and if I have succeeded in representing her as charming and delightful, I am indebted solely to the distinguished courtoisie with which Wagenseil mentions her."
"Verily," said Theodore, laughing, "to stumble upon Mademoiselle Scuderi in the 'Nuernberg Chronicle' requires an author's lucky hand, such as Sylvester is specially gifted with. In fact, he shines on us to-night in his double capacity of playwright and story-teller, like the constellation of the Dioscuri."
"That is just where he seems to me so vain," said Vincenz. "A man who writes a good play ought not to set to work to tell a good tale as well."
"Yet it is strange," said Cyprian, "that authors who can tell a story well, who manage their characters and situations cleverly, often fail altogether in drama for the stage."
"But," said Lothair, "are not the conditions of drama and of narrative so essentially different in their fundamental elements, that the attempt to turn a story into a play is very often a complete failure? You understand that I am speaking of true narrative, not of the novel, so much, because that has often in it germs from which the drama can grow up like a glorious, beautiful tree."
"What do you think," asked Vincenz, "of the admirable idea of making a story out of a play? Some years ago I read Iffland's 'Jaeger' turned into a story, and you can't believe how delightful and touching little Anton with the couteau de chasse, and Riekchen with the lost shoe, were in this shape. It was delightful, too, that the author, or adapter, preserved whole scenes unchanged, merely putting in the 'said he,' and 'answered she,' between the speeches. I assure you I did not wholly realise the truly poetic imagination, and the deep sublimity which there is in Iffland's 'Jaeger,' until I read it in this form. Moreover, the scientific side of it struck me then, and I saw how properly it was classed in a certain library under the head 'Science of Forestry.'"