palmy day, and in whose rise was the development of the mightiest
intellect ripened by the most relentless ambition,--I come to gaze upon
the last star in a darkening firmament. By this hour to-morrow space
shall know it not. Man, thy days are cumbered!"

"What means this jargon?" said the Prince, in visible astonishment and
secret awe. "Comest thou to menace me in my own halls, or wouldest thou
warn me of a danger? Art thou some itinerant mountebank, or some
unguessed of friend? Speak out, and plainly. What danger threatens
me?"

"Zicci!" replied the stranger.

"Ha! ha!" said the Prince, laughing scornfully; "I half suspected thee
from the first. Thou art, then, the accomplice or the tool of that most
dexterous, but, at present, defeated charlatan. And I suppose thou wilt
tell me that if I were to release a certain captive I have made, the
danger would vanish and the hand of the dial would be put back?"

"Judge of me as thou wilt, Prince di --. I confess my knowledge of
Zicci,--a knowledge shared but by a few, who--But this touches thee not.
I would save, therefore I warn thee. Dost thou ask me why? I will tell
thee. Canst thou remember to have heard wild tales of thy grandsire,--
of his desire for a knowledge that passes that of the schools and
cloisters; of a strange man from the East, who was his familiar and
master in lore, against which the Vatican has from age to age launched
its mimic thunder? Dost thou call to mind the fortunes of thy
ancestor,--how he succeeded in youth to little but a name; how, after a
career wild and dissolute as thine, he disappeared from Milan, a pauper
and a self-exile; how, after years spent none knew in what climes or in