I laughed aloud like a child. I was firmly convinced that it was all true, and I danced round the palm, with the purse and cap in my hands, like a madman. “What are lotteries, stocks, and Rothschild’s speculations in comparison,” cried I; “do I wish for a million—I have to use my purse for a day, and my cap serves me better than the swiftest courier.”
My reason at last returned, and the madman became again the prudent, calculating merchant.
“Make a calculation, and produce an exact facit,” said the merchant. I seated myself again, with tolerable composure, at the foot of the palm. I wished calmly to prove the power of the purse, but my hand trembled as I put it into it. My fingers twitched convulsively, the fascination of the noblest of metals penetrated every nerve, and there, in my hand, before my wondering, blissful gaze, lay a hundred franc piece, with the new stamp, “Louis Philippe, Roi des Français.” “O, Heaven! life is still fair,” I cried with Schiller’s Marquis Posa, and proved the power of my purse again and again, until the lap of my Turkish dress was covered with, hundred-franc-pieces.
My eyes feasted upon the treasure, my soul reveled in rapture.
“Prudence, prudence,” said the merchant within me. “May not the gold be false, or coined in the devil’s mint, and if you attempt to use it destroy your honor and reputation?” I tried it upon the leather of my sandals, and upon a little stone that I carried about with me for the purpose. It was pure Parisian coin. I put up my gold and filled my pockets with it. How blessed was I that I had withstood Van Delpt’s and Fleury’s entreaties. What was their happiness now—their manna of immortality? Dreams and froth! But I possessed the most desirable, glorious reality—my pockets full of gold, the inexhaustible purse, and the wonderful cap. Ay—the cap—its power must also be proved; I must know if by its art I could be this moment in the date forest on the Bosphorus, and the next in the cherry grove in Frankfort on the Main. In a flash I placed the little thing upon my head and thought of the Barbarossa town, and of the little balcony which looked into Kate’s room. What is a royal dispatch in comparison with the cap of Fortunatus? Without inconvenience from the elbows of neighbors, without the least change in my worthy person, I stood before the window through whose curtains I could look into Kate’s little room. I looked round me; the leaning tower, with its straight brother, were at my back; I was in my native town, the breeze of home stirred around me. Just then Kate stepped into the room. She carried a candle, was negligently dressed, and was humming an air from “Der Freischütz.” Was the girl altered, or had my too lively fancy deceived me, and presented to me at a distance as charming, what in reality seemed to me extremely vulgar? Where was the variety of charms that had so excited my love in Constantinople? Where was the airy grace that had surrounded the image of the absent one, as the air of Paradise encircles a Mohammedan houri? Kate was, in truth, no disagreeable-looking girl, but excessively commonplace; she had cheeks as fresh and round as an apple, pretty hair, a la giraffe, eyes whose color was rather undecided, and a form which, although it certainly was not wanting in roundness, did not move with exactly the grace of a dancing-master. I felt my heart grow cold at the sight of her. Heaven knows, my taste must have become wonderfully refined since I had been separated from her; knowledge of mankind and of the world must have sharpened my judgment. I never could love this creature—that was ineffaceably written in my soul. The purse and cap had given me the right to other claims than to be the son-in-law of the burgomaster of an obscure German village, and to demean myself by selling crêpe de Chine and eau de Cologne.
“Away, away from here, to the fairest of the fair!” I cried, inspired. “Who will dispute with me the possession of the most beautiful woman upon the earth?”
In an instant I stood in a high vestibule, upon a marble floor; from the frescoed walls shone the light of a hundred tapers; the fragrance-laden air of the tropics was around me, and silver fountains were playing without in the moonlight. A great mirror opposite reflected my image. I was clad in black, in my finest European suit. I wore the breast-pin with the turquoise and brilliants, which I had bought two years before in Frankfort, and I knew that I was in the palace of the Duke of Silvio Cremonio, in Rio Janeiro, to whose beautiful daughter I was about to be introduced. All this the wonderful cap had arranged and declared to me.
Fifty lackeys, in rich livery, flew to my assistance. Two ushers opened the folding-doors, and at their announcement, “The Marquis della Mostarda!” I stepped into a brilliant saloon.
I was in a maze—the dresses of the ladies, which blazed with diamonds and other precious stones, dazzled me. What was the home-made splendor of my former employers, Steinlein & Son, which I had so often admired in my yearly visit to them, compared with this.
What was the finery of the richest merchant’s daughter compared with the splendor of the ladies of Rio Janeiro. I noticed that my entrance created a sensation. The ladies remained standing, looked at me and whispered among themselves. A little stout gentleman pushed forward from the crowd toward me. It was the duke. He wore a richly embroidered dress, with ribbon and star.