“And so saying, he struck the purse against the side of the gateway; but, instead of the merry clink of gold coin, we heard only the dull sound of a far less valuable metal. This startled him not a little. He changed color, then drew his knife, and in an instant cut the string, and emptied the contents of the purse upon his open palm.
“Horrible! Instead of bright golden Louis, he held in his hand a small pile of leaden disks? Each one of these disks had a number and a letter on it, and one of them was engraved, on the obverse side, with the simple words—‘Place the coins in order.’ We did so, and found that each letter formed part of a word. When they were all placed, the inscription read, ‘All is not gold that glitters!’
“My soul quailed before the mystery. I could scarcely move or speak, so great was my bewilderment; and as for the patron, it is impossible to describe his terror and consternation, as he stood there, with open mouth and protruding eyeballs, gazing on the coins upon the board where he had laid them. I too looked upon them; and even while we did so, a terrible thing took place; for the letters upon the disks changed color before our very eyes, first to a light blue, changing to deep crimson, and finally assuming a blood-red color. When, at the end of thirty seconds, this color did not change, we looked closer at them, and, to our absolute amazement, found that the characters themselves had altered, and instead of the sentence above quoted, we read the following:
“ ‘Remember Ravalette! Fear not!’
“With a cry of agony the man dashed the accursed coins to the ground, and instantly fell himself in a deathly swoon. A great excitement now ensued. The porter, Jeanette, and half a dozen other inmates, rushed to the assistance of their fallen master.
“Tenderly and carefully we bore him into the house, and speedily resorted to those well-known means of restoration used in such cases, which it were superfluous to mention; suffice it that, at the expiration of half an hour, the man revived, and bidding him and the rest a short good-bye, and promising to return on the morrow if I did not quit Paris, I took my departure.
“Before I left, however, it occurred to me that I would secure the marvellous coins, or, at least, a few of them; and for this purpose I, accompanied by the concierge, who had seen his master dash them away, went into the court-yard where he had thrown them. Carefully and long we searched over the smooth stone pavements. The marks where they had struck were there, but not a single coin could be found. It was absolutely certain that no person in the house had picked them up, for all these were in attendance on the patron. It was equally certain that no one from the street had done so; for the gate was fast bolted and shut, and had been ever since I had entered the premises to inquire of the porter.
“At length we gave up the task of finding them as utterly hopeless. I looked at the porter and shook my head; the porter looked at me and shook his head in return, as much as to say, ‘It is a very strange affair!’ At that moment a voice, coming from God knows where, for it seemed to issue neither from above nor below, in the house or out of it—a hollow, half-pathetic, half-cynical voice, echoed our unspoken thought—‘It is a VERY strange affair!’ The horror-stricken porter crossed himself devoutly, and, falling on his knees, began to pray, while I in the meanwhile undid the bolts, opened the port, and rushed into the open street.
“The thing was altogether of so weird a character, that I almost doubted the evidence of my senses; yet, on recalling all the circumstances from first to last, the testimony affirming the events was altogether too strong, overpowering and direct, to be doubted for an instant.
“In books of ancient lore; in the old Black letter volumes of antiquity; in the recital of the exploits of Appolonius of Tyanæ; in the Life of Darwin; in the story of Grugantus, and in the ‘Records of the Weird Brethren of Appulia,’ I had read of Magic Marvels, almost too wonderful for the belief of those ignorant masses contemporaneous with the authors and heroes of the various legends. But in the light of modern learning, all these things had been resolved into three primitive elements, and these were: 1st., and principal. Ignorance of the Masses. 2d. The clouds of superstition which for long ages hovered over the world. And, 3d. The amazing skill possessed by the various arch-impostors of antiquity. Thus I accounted for much that was reported to have taken place in ‘ye Olden Tyme;’ but how to explain away what myself and several others had just witnessed, on the same easy and general hypothesis, was a task altogether beyond achievement. To attempt to get rid of the difficulty on the supposition of mere ‘Fancy,’ was simply ridiculous: and yet, while one does not feel at liberty to admit the idea of Magic, here were circumstances of such a tremendous character, as to utterly forbid and defy explication upon any other ground whatever.