“You are a believer in spirits, then?” said Mervale, with an incredulous smile.

“Nay, it was not precisely of spirits that I spoke; but there may be forms of matter as invisible and impalpable to us as the animalculae in the air we breathe,—­in the water that plays in yonder basin.  Such beings may have passions and powers like our own—­as the animalculae to which I have compared them.  The monster that lives and dies in a drop of water—­carnivorous, insatiable, subsisting on the creatures minuter than himself—­is not less deadly in his wrath, less ferocious in his nature, than the tiger of the desert.  There may be things around us that would be dangerous and hostile to men, if Providence had not placed a wall between them and us, merely by different modifications of matter.”

“And think you that wall never can be removed?” asked young Glyndon, abruptly.  “Are the traditions of sorcerer and wizard, universal and immemorial as they are, merely fables?”

“Perhaps yes,—­perhaps no,” answered the stranger, indifferently.  “But who, in an age in which the reason has chosen its proper bounds, would be mad enough to break the partition that divides him from the boa and the lion,—­to repine at and rebel against the law which confines the shark to the great deep?  Enough of these idle speculations.”

Here the stranger rose, summoned the attendant, paid for his sherbet, and, bowing slightly to the company, soon disappeared among the trees.

“Who is that gentleman?” asked Glyndon, eagerly.

The rest looked at each other, without replying, for some moments.

“I never saw him before,” said Mervale, at last.

“Nor I.”

“Nor I.”

“I know him well,” said the Neapolitan, who was, indeed, the Count Cetoxa.  “If you remember, it was as my companion that he joined you.  He visited Naples about two years ago, and has recently returned; he is very rich,—­indeed, enormously so.  A most agreeable person.  I am sorry to hear him talk so strangely to-night; it serves to encourage the various foolish reports that are circulated concerning him.”

“And surely,” said another Neapolitan, “the circumstance that occurred but the other day, so well known to yourself, Cetoxa, justifies the reports you pretend to deprecate.”

“Myself and my countryman,” said Glyndon, “mix so little in Neapolitan society, that we lose much that appears well worthy of lively interest.  May I enquire what are the reports, and what is the circumstance you refer to?”

“As to the reports, gentlemen,” said Cetoxa, courteously, addressing himself to the two Englishmen, “it may suffice to observe, that they attribute to the Signor Zanoni certain qualities which everybody desires for himself, but damns any one else for possessing.  The incident Signor Belgioso alludes to, illustrates these qualities, and is, I must own, somewhat startling.  You probably play, gentlemen?” (Here Cetoxa paused;