+ VIRGO . DEUM . FERT . DUX . CAPUD . AUFERT . QUOD . LUPUS . HIC . FERT + Then he again retraced the letters with his sensitive fingers to reassure himself that he had made no mistake. The next he drew towards him proved to be the seal of the Vice-Warden of the Grey Friars of Cambridge, a pointed one used about the year 1244, which to himself he declared, in heraldic language, to bear the device of "a cross raguly debruised by a spear, and a crown of thorns in bend dexter, and a sponge on a staff in bend sinister, between two threefold _flagella_ in base"--surely a formidable array of the instruments used in the Passion. Deeply interested, and speaking to himself aloud, as was his habit when alone, he examined them one after the other. Among the collection were the seals of Berengar de Brolis, Plebanus of Pacina (in Syracuse), and those of the Commune of Beauvais (1228); Mathilde (or Mahaut), daughter of Henri Duke of Brabant (1265); the town of Oudenbourg in West Flanders, and of the Vicar-Provincial of the Carmelite Order at Palermo (1350); Jacobus de Gnapet, Bishop of Rennes (1480); and of Bondi Marquis of Sasolini of Bologna (1323). He had almost concluded when Goslin, the grey-bearded Frenchman, having breakfasted alone in the dining-room, entered. "Ah, _mon cher_ Sir Henry!" he exclaimed, "at work so early! The study of seals must be very fascinating to you, though I confess that, for myself, I could never see in them very much to interest one." "No. To the ordinary person, my dear Goslin, it appears no doubt, a most dryasdust study, but to a man afflicted like myself it is the only study that he can pursue, for with his finger tips he can learn the devices and decipher the inscriptions," the blind Baronet declared. "Take, for instance, only this little collection of a dozen or so impressions which they have so kindly sent to me from Norwich. Each one of them tells me something. Its device, its general character, its heraldry, its inscription, are all highly instructive. For the collector there are opportunities for the study of the historical allusions, the emblematology and imagery, the hagiology, the biographical and topographical episodes, and the other peculiarities and idiosyncrasies in all the seals he possesses." Goslin, like most other people, had been many times bored by the old man's technical discourses upon his hobby. But he never showed it. He, just the same as other people, made pretence of being interested. "Yes," he remarked, "they must be most instructive to the student. I recollect seeing a great quantity in the Bargello at Florence."