“Make a calculation, and produce an exact facit,” said the merchant. I seated myself again, with tolerable composure, at the foot of the palm. I wished calmly to prove the power of the purse, but my hand trembled as I put it into it. My fingers twitched convulsively, the fascination of the noblest of metals penetrated every nerve, and there, in my hand, before my wondering, blissful gaze, lay a hundred franc piece, with the new stamp, “Louis Philippe, Roi des Français.” “O, Heaven! life is still fair,” I cried with Schiller’s Marquis Posa, and proved the power of my purse again and again, until the lap of my Turkish dress was covered with, hundred-franc-pieces. My eyes feasted upon the treasure, my soul reveled in rapture. “Prudence, prudence,” said the merchant within me. “May not the gold be false, or coined in the devil’s mint, and if you attempt to use it destroy your honor and reputation?” I tried it upon the leather of my sandals, and upon a little stone that I carried about with me for the purpose. It was pure Parisian coin. I put up my gold and filled my pockets with it. How blessed was I that I had withstood Van Delpt’s and Fleury’s entreaties. What was their happiness now—their manna of immortality? Dreams and froth! But I possessed the most desirable, glorious reality—my pockets full of gold, the inexhaustible purse, and the wonderful cap. Ay—the cap—its power must also be proved; I must know if by its art I could be this moment in the date forest on the Bosphorus, and the next in the cherry grove in Frankfort on the Main. In a flash I placed the little thing upon my head and thought of the Barbarossa town, and of the little balcony which looked into Kate’s room. What is a royal dispatch in comparison with the cap of Fortunatus? Without inconvenience from the elbows of neighbors, without the least change in my worthy person, I stood before the window through whose curtains I could look into Kate’s little room. I looked round me; the leaning tower, with its straight brother, were at my back; I was in my native town, the breeze of home stirred around me. Just then Kate stepped into the room. She carried a candle, was negligently dressed, and was humming an air from “Der Freischütz.” Was the girl altered, or had my too lively fancy deceived me, and presented to me at a distance as charming, what in reality seemed to me extremely vulgar? Where was the variety of charms that had so excited my love in Constantinople? Where was the airy grace that had surrounded the image of the absent one, as the air of Paradise encircles a Mohammedan houri? Kate was, in truth, no disagreeable-looking girl, but excessively commonplace; she had cheeks as fresh and round as an apple, pretty hair, _a la giraffe_, eyes whose color was rather undecided, and a form which, although it certainly was not wanting in roundness, did not move with exactly the grace of a dancing-master. I felt my heart grow cold at the sight of her.