Abel Larinski paused at this place.  He put his letter down on the table, and, turning round in his arm-chair, with a savage air, his eye fixed on a distant corner of the room, he fell to thus soliloquizing in a sepulchral voice: 

“Do you hear, idiot?  This old knave is right.  Accursed be the day when the genius of invention thrilled your sublime brain!  A grand discovery you have made, forsooth!  What have I gained from it?  Grand illusions, grand discomfitures!  What hath it availed me that I passed whole nights discussing with you breech-loaders, screw-plates, tumbrels, sockets, bridges, ovoid balls, and spring-locks?  What fruits have I gained from these refreshing conversations?  You foresaw everything, my great man, except that one little thing which great men so often fail to see, that mysterious something, I know not what, which makes success.  When you spoke to me, in your slow, monotonous tones, when you fixed upon me your melancholy gaze, I should have been able to read in your eyes that you were only a fool.  The devil take thee and thy gun, thy gun and thee; hollow head, head full of chimeras, true Pole, true Larinski!”

To whom was Count Abel speaking?  To a phantom?  To his double?  He alone knew.  When he had uttered the last words, he resumed the perusal of his letter, which ended thus: 

“Will you permit me to give you a piece of advice, M. le Comte, a good little piece of advice?  I have known you for three years, and have taken much interest in your welfare.  You invent guns, which, when they are strong, lack lightness.  I beg your pardon, but I do not comprehend you, M. le Comte.  The name you bear is excellent; the head you carry on your shoulders is superb, and it is the general opinion that you resemble Faust; but neither name nor head does you any good.  Leave the guns as they are, and bestow your attention upon women; they, and they alone, can draw you out of the deep waters where you are now floundering.  There is no time to lose.  I beg your pardon, but you must be thirty years old, and perhaps a little more.  This diable of a gun has made you lose three valuable years.

“It pains me, M. le Comte, to be compelled to remind you that the little note falls due shortly.  I have had the value of the bracelet you left with me as a pledge estimated; it is not worth a thousand florins, as you believed; it is a piece of antiquity that has a value to only those who can indulge in a caprice for fancy articles, and such caprices are rare nowadays, the time for such is past.

“I am, M. le Comte, with much respect, your humble and obedient servant,

“MOSES GULDENTHAL.”

Abel Larinski turned once more in his chair.  He crumpled up between his fingers the letter of M. Moses Guldenthal, saying to himself as he did so, that the Guldenthals are often very clear-sighted folks.  “Ay, to be sure,” thought he, “this Hebrew is right, I have lost three valuable years.  I have had fever, and my eyes have been clouded; but, Heaven be praised!  The charm is broken, the illusion fled, I am cured—­saved!  Farewell, my chimera, I am no longer thy dupe!  Many thanks, my dear friend:  I return to you your gun; do with it as it seemeth best to you.”