Deeply interested, and speaking to himself aloud, as was his habit when alone, he examined them one after the other.  Among the collection were the seals of Berengar de Brolis, Plebanus of Pacina (in Syracuse), and those of the Commune of Beauvais (1228); Mathilde (or Mahaut), daughter of Henri Duke of Brabant (1265); the town of Oudenbourg in West Flanders, and of the Vicar-Provincial of the Carmelite Order at Palermo (1350); Jacobus de Gnapet, Bishop of Rennes (1480); and of Bondi Marquis of Sasolini of Bologna (1323).

He had almost concluded when Goslin, the grey-bearded Frenchman, having breakfasted alone in the dining-room, entered.  “Ah, mon cher Sir Henry!” he exclaimed, “at work so early!  The study of seals must be very fascinating to you, though I confess that, for myself, I could never see in them very much to interest one.”

“No.  To the ordinary person, my dear Goslin, it appears no doubt, a most dryasdust study, but to a man afflicted like myself it is the only study that he can pursue, for with his finger tips he can learn the devices and decipher the inscriptions,” the blind Baronet declared.  “Take, for instance, only this little collection of a dozen or so impressions which they have so kindly sent to me from Norwich.  Each one of them tells me something.  Its device, its general character, its heraldry, its inscription, are all highly instructive.  For the collector there are opportunities for the study of the historical allusions, the emblematology and imagery, the hagiology, the biographical and topographical episodes, and the other peculiarities and idiosyncrasies in all the seals he possesses.”

Goslin, like most other people, had been many times bored by the old man’s technical discourses upon his hobby.  But he never showed it.  He, just the same as other people, made pretence of being interested.  “Yes,” he remarked, “they must be most instructive to the student.  I recollect seeing a great quantity in the Bargello at Florence.”

“Ah, a very fine collection—­part of the Medici collection, and contains some of the finest Italian and Spanish specimens,” remarked the blind connoisseur.  “Birch of the British Museum is quite right in declaring that the seal, portable and abounding in detail, not difficult of acquisition nor hard to read if we set about deciphering the story it has to tell, takes us back as we look upon it to the very time of its making, and sets us, as it were, face to face with the actual owners of the relic.”

The Frenchman sighed.  He saw he was in for a long dissertation; and, moving uneasily towards the window, changed the topic of conversation by saying, “I had a long letter from Paris this morning.  Krail is back again, it appears.”

“Ah, that man!” cried the other impatiently.  “When will his extraordinary energies be suppressed?  They are watching him carefully, I suppose.”

“Of course,” replied the Frenchman.  “He left Paris about a month ago, but unfortunately the men watching him did not follow.  He took train for Berlin, and has been absent until now.”