We ate sweetmeats and drank coffee together for several days.
He was so delighted with my keen intellect, sharp, nipping wit, and great powers of imagination, that he expressed himself as being more than paid for his journey to Constantinople, although he had not yet opened his packs.
When the time came for us to part, he proceeded to loosen the leather thongs which held down the lid of a strange looking chest, whose top and sides were covered over with curious figures in inlays of several colors.
From one corner of this receptacle he drew forth a volumen or roll-book of antiquity.
To one end of it was attached, by a strip of parchment, a waxen seal, stamped with what seemed to have been a monarch’s signet ring. This ancient and venerable book exhaled a very musty smell.
The Armenian handled it carefully, saying:
“It is quite old; some 6,000 years.” Seeing astonishment depicted on my countenance, he smiled and continued:
“Yes, 6,000 years! It has only been unrolled far enough for me to decipher the nature of its contents. It treats of the human soul, and pretends to have solved its mystery completely—a problem which has baffled the philosophers of all ages. It even goes so far as to claim that the essence which we call “soul” may be taken out of a body and put into a bottle; that one soul may be thrust into a man’s body to keep his own company, and that in this manner the whole world may be reformed, made over; evil being entirely destroyed and good only remaining.
“You smile, little baron, but it seems to me quite feasible. For instance, this rare old book quite rightly assumes that if we could thrust a good soul into a body already inhabited by a bad one, that man or woman would henceforth cease to do evil, or, at least, the good soul would continually betray its bad companion, and, altho’ the man might plan a murder, he would not fail to inform some one of his dread purpose, and thus defeat his own ends.”
“Or,” continued the merchant, “take the case of a miser; by thrusting the soul of a spendthrift into his body, his inclination to hoard money and starve his family would be forever and always opposed by an ardent desire to waste his earnings, and the result would be that these two vices would neutralize each other; and so with a drunkard or a thief: by placing the soul of a water-drinker in the one and of a moral man in the other, a perfect reformation could be brought about. This is a valuable book, little baron, but I give it to you, merely exacting a promise from you that in case I am right in my understanding of it, you will impart the secret to the fathers of the church.”