Was Aurelia deceiver or deceived?  Should he execrate her, or her venerable grandmother, or some unknown person?  The point was too knotty to be solved in the agitated state of his feelings.  He decided it provisionally by execrating the entire human race, not forgetting himself.

In a mood like Otto’s a trifling circumstance is sufficient to determine the quality of action.  The ancient city of which he was at the time an inhabitant was traversed by a large river spanned by a quaint and many-arched bridge, to which his frantic and aimless wanderings had conducted him.  Spires and gables and lengthy facades were reflected in the water, blended with the shadows of boats, and interspersed with the mirrored flames of innumerable windows on land, or of lanterns suspended from the masts or sterns of the vessels.  The dancing ripples bickered and flickered, and seemed to say, “Come hither to us,” while the dark reaches of still water in the shadow of the piers promised that whatever might be entrusted to them should be faithfully retained.  Swayed by a sudden impulse, Otto drew his ring from his finger.  It gleamed an instant aloft in air; in another the relaxation of his grasp would have consigned it to the stream.

“Forbear!”

Otto turned, and perceived a singular figure by his side.  The stranger was tall and thin, and attired in a dusky cloak which only partially concealed a flame-coloured jerkin.  A cock’s feather peaked up in his cap; his eyes were piercingly brilliant; his nose was aquiline; the expression of his features sinister and sardonic.  Had Otto been more observant, or less preoccupied, he might have noticed that the stranger’s left shoe was of a peculiar form, and that he limped some little with the corresponding foot.

“Forbear, I say; thou knowest not what thou doest.”

“And what skills what I do with a piece of common glass?”

“Thou errest, friend; thy ring is not common glass.  Had thy mistress surmised its mystic virtues, she would have thought oftener than twice ere exchanging it for thy diamond.”

“What may these virtues be?” eagerly demanded Otto.

“In the first place, it will show thee when thy mistress may chance to think of thee, as it will then prick thy finger.”

“Now I know thee for a lying knave,” exclaimed the youth indignantly.  “Learn, to thy confusion, that it hath not pricked me once since I parted from Aurelia.”

“Which proves that she has never once thought of thee.”

“Villain!” shouted Otto, “say that again, and I will transfix thee.”

“Thou mayest if thou canst,” rejoined the stranger, with an expression of such cutting scorn that Otto’s spirit quailed, and he felt a secret but overpowering conviction of his interlocutor’s veracity.  Rallying, however, in some measure, he exclaimed: 

“Aurelia is true!  I will wager my soul upon it!”

“Done!” screamed the stranger in a strident voice of triumph, while a burst of diabolical laughter seemed to proceed from every cranny of the eaves and piers of the old bridge, and to be taken up by goblin echoes from the summits of the adjacent towers and steeples.