“The hermit,” remarked the senator, “has without informing you of it, linked an invisible spirit to the calculus he has taught you, for simple numbers can not have the power of reason.  You possess a real treasure, and you may derive great advantages from it.”

“I do not know,” I said, “in what way I could make my science useful, because the answers given by the numerical figures are often so obscure that I have felt discouraged, and I very seldom tried to make any use of my calculus.  Yet, it is very true that, if I had not formed my pyramid, I never should have had the happiness of knowing your excellency.”

“How so?”

“On the second day, during the festivities at the Soranzo Palace, I enquired of my oracle whether I would meet at the ball anyone whom I should not care to see.  The answer I obtained was this:  ’Leave the ball-room precisely at four o’clock.’  I obeyed implicitly, and met your excellency.”

The three friends were astounded.  M. Dandolo asked me whether I would answer a question he would ask, the interpretation of which would belong only to him, as he was the only person acquainted with the subject of the question.

I declared myself quite willing, for it was necessary to brazen it out, after having ventured as far as I had done.  He wrote the question, and gave it to me; I read it, I could not understand either the subject or the meaning of the words, but it did not matter, I had to give an answer.  If the question was so obscure that I could not make out the sense of it, it was natural that I should not understand the answer.  I therefore answered, in ordinary figures, four lines of which he alone could be the interpreter, not caring much, at least in appearance, how they would be understood.  M. Dandolo read them twice over, seemed astonished, said that it was all very plain to him; it was Divine, it was unique, it was a gift from Heaven, the numbers being only the vehicle, but the answer emanating evidently from an immortal spirit.

M. Dandolo was so well pleased that his two friends very naturally wanted also to make an experiment.  They asked questions on all sorts of subjects, and my answers, perfectly unintelligible to myself, were all held as Divine by them.  I congratulated them on their success, and congratulated myself in their presence upon being the possessor of a thing to which I had until then attached no importance whatever, but which I promised to cultivate carefully, knowing that I could thus be of some service to their excellencies.

They all asked me how long I would require to teach them the rules of my sublime calculus.  “Not very long,” I answered, “and I will teach you as you wish, although the hermit assured me that I would die suddenly within three days if I communicated my science to anyone, but I have no faith whatever in that prediction.”  M. de Bragadin who believed in it more than I did, told me in a serious tone that I was bound to have faith in it, and from