“Don’t you recollect that he pretended the note through which Amelia has been absolved from her vow by her late Lord, to have been the effect of Hiermanfor’s supernatural power?”
“Not only the Count, Hiermanfor too has made me believe it.”
“Both of them has told you a barefaced lie.”
“Friend, how will you be able to make good your charge?”
“By proving that pretended miracle to be a juggling trick.”
“You have raised my expectation to the highest pitch.”
“I have learned that trick of a juggler, and I am sure that which the Irishman has made use of is the same. He gave Amelia a blank slip of paper, and directed her to write the question on the upper part of it. Here you must regard three points; first of all, that he himself gave the paper, to Amelia; secondly, that he desired the question to be written on the upper part of it; and thirdly, that he dictated the question to her; he then put the paper on the table, fumigated the apartment with an incense of his own composition, and requested the Countess to look at the paper in the morning. It was very natural that the answer to the question was seen beneath it, having been previously written with sympathetic ink the preceding evening, but first rendered visible in the night by the fumigation. Very likely it had been written by the Count, who could imitate the hand-writing of his brother.”
The Duke gazed at me along while, seized with dumb astonishment. At length he clapped his hands joyfully, exclaiming, “O! my friend, what a light have you cast upon that dark mysterious affair.”
“A light,” my reply was, “that will assist you to see clearly how dishonestly the Irishman and the Count have dealt with you to the last. They endeavoured to persuade you that you had been deceived at first, merely for the sake of probation, and that you had been paid with sterling truth after Paleski’s discovery. Poor deceived man; you have always been beset with lies and delusions; the sole point in which they differed from each other, consisting merely in the superior art which the latter impositions were contrived with.”
“Then you believe that the apparition at the church-yard has also been a deception, like the incident with the miraculous note.”