“In the second place, you might sell the knife to the Pope, if you happen to possess proof of its authenticity.”
“You mean the parchment. Of course I have it; do you think I would have bought one without the other?”
“All right, then. In order to get possession of that knife, the Pope would, I have no doubt, make a cardinal of your son, but you must have the sheath too.”
“I have not got it, but it is unnecessary. At all events I can have one made.”
“That would not do, you must have the very one in which Saint Peter himself sheathed the knife when God said, ‘Mitte gladium tuum in vaginam’. That very sheath does exist, and it is now in the hands of a person who might sell it to you at a reasonable price, or you might sell him your knife, for the sheath without the knife is of no use to him, just as the knife is useless to you without the sheath.”
“How much would it cost me?”
“One thousand sequins.”
“And how much would that person give me for the knife?”
“One thousand sequins, for one has as much value as the other.”
The commissary, greatly astonished, looked at his son, and said, with the voice of a judge on the bench,