"What do I see?" cried Rustan.
Topaz and Ebene answered together: "You see your two geniuses."
"Good gentlemen," cried the unhappy Rustan, "how came you to meddle; and what occasion had a poor man for two geniuses?"
"It is a law," answered Topaz; "every man has too geniuses. Plato was the first man who said so, and others have repeated it after him. You see that nothing can be more true. I who now speak to you, am your good genius. I was charged to watch over you to the last moment of your life. Of this task I have faithfully acquitted myself."
"But," said the dying man, "if your business was to serve me, I am of a nature much superior to yours. And then how can you have the assurance to say you are my good genius, since you have suffered me to be deceived in everything I have undertaken, and since you suffer both my mistress and me to die miserably?"
"Alas!" said Topaz, "it was your destiny."
"If destiny does all," answered the dying man, "what is a genius good for? And you, Ebene, with your four black wings, you are, doubtless, my evil genius."
"You have hit it," answered Ebene.
"Then I suppose you were the evil genius of my princess likewise," said Rustan.
"No," replied Ebene, "she had an evil genius of her own, and I seconded him perfectly."