“Ah,” he cried, “here is the mark of the seal which they call in the East the Signet of Solomon.”
“So you know that, then?” asked the merchant. His peculiar method of laughter, two or three quick breathings through the nostrils, said more than any words however eloquent.
“Is there anybody in the world simple enough to believe in that idle fancy?” said the young man, nettled by the spitefulness of the silent chuckle. “Don’t you know,” he continued, “that the superstitions of the East have perpetuated the mystical form and the counterfeit characters of the symbol, which represents a mythical dominion? I have no more laid myself open to a charge of credulity in this case, than if I had mentioned sphinxes or griffins, whose existence mythology in a manner admits.”
“As you are an Orientalist,” replied the other, “perhaps you can read that sentence.”
He held the lamp close to the talisman, which the young man held towards him, and pointed out some characters inlaid in the surface of the wonderful skin, as if they had grown on the animal to which it once belonged.
“I must admit,” said the stranger, “that I have no idea how the letters could be engraved so deeply on the skin of a wild ass.” And he turned quickly to the tables strewn with curiosities and seemed to look for something.
“What is it that you want?” asked the old man.
“Something that will cut the leather, so that I can see whether the letters are printed or inlaid.”
The old man held out his stiletto. The stranger took it and tried to cut the skin above the lettering; but when he had removed a thin shaving of leather from them, the characters still appeared below, so clear and so exactly like the surface impression, that for a moment he was not sure that he had cut anything away after all.
“The craftsmen of the Levant have secrets known only to themselves,” he said, half in vexation, as he eyed the characters of this Oriental sentence.