The door revolved noiselessly on its hinges, and a few steps brought the Italian to the chamber of the sage. It was a small and central cell, without the slightest visible communication with the outward air. Books of strange characters and instruments of singular device were scattered on the floor, the tables, and the seats; astrolabes, globes of the terrestrial and celestial world, crucibles, and vials of rare and potent mixtures, lay beside discolored bones, reptiles, and loathsome things from tropical climes, some stuffed, and others carefully preserved in spirit. A huge furnace glimmered in the corner, covered with vessels containing, doubtless, alembics of unearthly power; a large black cat--to which inoffensive animal wild notions of infernal origin were then attached--and a gigantic owl, perched on a fleshless skull, completed the ornaments of this receptacle of superstitious quackery, which was rendered as light as day by the aid of some composition, burning in a lamp so brilliantly as to dazzle the firmest eye. In the midst of this confused assemblage of things, useless and revolting alike to reason and humanity, the master-spirit of his tribe was seated--a small old man, whose massive forehead, pencilled with the deep lines of thought, would have betokened a profound and powerful mind, had not the quick flash of the small and deeply-seated eye belied, by its crafty and malignant glances, all symptoms of a noble nature. “Hail, Signor David!” he said, but without raising his eyes from the retort over which he was poring. “Hail! methought that thou didst hold the wisdom of the sage mere quackery! Ha! out upon such changeful, feather-pated knaves, who scoff before men at that which they respect--ay, which they tremble at in private!--tremble! well mayst thou tremble--for thy doom is fixed! See,” he cried, in a fearfully unnatural tone, as he raised the metallic rod with which he had been stirring the contents of the glass vessel, and exhibited it dripping with some crimson-colored liquid--“see! it is gore--thy gore, Signor David!--ha, ha, ha!” and he laughed with fiendish glee at the evident discomposure of his guest. “Nay, nay, good father--” he began, when the other cut him off abruptly-- “‘Good father!’--ha, ha, ha! Good devil! Fool, dost think that thou canst change the destinies that were eternal, before so vain a thing as thou wast in existence, by thine unmeaning flatteries? I spit upon such courtesies! ‘Good father!’ listen to my words, and mark if I be good. Thou hast risen by meanness, and flattery, and cringing, and vice; thou hast disgraced thy rise by insolence and folly--weak, drivelling folly; and thou shalt fall--ha, ha, ha!--fall like a dog! Look to thyself!--‘Good father!’ Begone, or thou shalt hear more, and that which thou wilt like even less than this--begone!”