CHAPTER XXI

My Journey to Cesena in Search of Treasure—­I Take Up My Quarters in Franzia’s House—­His Daughter Javotte

The opera was nearly over when I was accosted by a young man who, abruptly, and without any introduction, told me that as a stranger—­I had been very wrong in spending two months in Mantua without paying a visit to the natural history collection belonging to his father, Don Antonio Capitani, commissary and prebendal president.

“Sir,” I answered, “I have been guilty only through ignorance, and if you would be so good as to call for me at my hotel to-morrow morning, before the evening I shall have atoned for my error, and you will no longer have the right to address me the same reproach”

The son of the prebendal commissary called for me, and I found in his father a most eccentric, whimsical sort of man.  The curiosities of his collection consisted of his family tree, of books of magic, relics, coins which he believed to be antediluvian, a model of the ark taken from nature at the time when Noah arrived in that extraordinary harbour, Mount Ararat, in Armenia.  He load several medals, one of Sesostris, another of Semiramis, and an old knife of a queer shape, covered with rust.  Besides all those wonderful treasures, he possessed, but under lock and key, all the paraphernalia of freemasonry.

“Pray, tell me,” I said to him, “what relation there is between this collection and natural history?  I see nothing here representing the three kingdoms.”

“What!  You do not see the antediluvian kingdom, that of Sesostris and that of Semiramis?  Are not those the three kingdoms?”

When I heard that answer I embraced him with an exclamation of delight, which was sarcastic in its intent, but which he took for admiration, and he at once unfolded all the treasures of his whimsical knowledge respecting his possessions, ending with the rusty blade which he said was the very knife with which Saint Peter cut off the ear of Malek.

“What!” I exclaimed, “you are the possessor of this knife, and you are not as rich as Croesus?”

“How could I be so through the possession of the knife?”

“In two ways.  In the first place, you could obtain possession of all the treasures hidden under ground in the States of the Church.”

“Yes, that is a natural consequence, because St. Peter has the keys.”

“In the second place, you might sell the knife to the Pope, if you happen to possess proof of its authenticity.”

“You mean the parchment.  Of course I have it; do you think I would have bought one without the other?”

“All right, then.  In order to get possession of that knife, the Pope would, I have no doubt, make a cardinal of your son, but you must have the sheath too.”

“I have not got it, but it is unnecessary.  At all events I can have one made.”