“You could take my knife from me?  I should like to be convinced of that, but I do not believe it.”

“You do not?  Very well, to-morrow the knife will be in my possession, but when it is once in my hands you need not hope to see it again.  A spirit which is under my orders will bring it to me at midnight, and the same spirit will tell me where the treasure is buried:” 

“Let the spirit tell you that, and I shall be convinced.”

“Give me a pen, ink and paper.”

I asked a question from my oracle, and the answer I had was that the treasure was to be found not far from the Rubicon.

“That is,” I said, “a torrent which was once a river:” 

They consulted a dictionary, and found that the Rubicon flowed through Cesena.  They were amazed, and, as I wished them to have full scope for wrong reasoning, I left them.

I had taken a fancy, not to purloin five hundred sequins from those poor fools, but to go and unearth the amount at their expense in the house of another fool, and to laugh at them all into the bargain.  I longed to play the part of a magician.  With that idea, when I left the house of the ridiculous antiquarian, I proceeded to the public library, where, with the assistance of a dictionary, I wrote the following specimen of facetious erudition: 

“The treasure is buried in the earth at a depth of seventeen and a half fathoms, and has been there for six centuries.  Its value amounts to two millions of sequins, enclosed in a casket, the same which was taken by Godfrey de Bouillon from Mathilda, Countess of Tuscany, in the year 1081, when he endeavoured to assist Henry IV, against that princess.  He buried the box himself in the very spot where it now is, before he went to lay siege to Jerusalem.  Gregory VII, who was a great magician, having been informed of the place where it had been hidden, had resolved on getting possession of it himself, but death prevented him from carrying out his intentions.  After the death of the Countess Mathilda, in the year 1116, the genius presiding over all hidden treasures appointed seven spirits to guard the box.  During a night with a full moon, a learned magician can raise the treasure to the surface of the earth by placing himself in the middle of the magical ring called maximus:” 

I expected to see the father and son, and they came early in the morning.  After some rambling conversation, I gave them what I had composed at the library, namely, the history of the treasure taken from the Countess Mathilda.

I told them that I had made up my mind to recover the treasure, and I promised them the fourth part of it, provided they would purchase the sheath; I concluded by threatening again to possess myself of their knife.

“I cannot decide,” said the commissary, “before I have seen the sheath.”

“I pledge my word to shew it to you to-morrow,” I answered.

We parted company, highly pleased with each other.