He said further, before beginning, that, as his catalepsy and palpitation of the heart increased critically, he must hasten to Spain to arrange his affairs, and, still more, those of his ward, the Countess of Romeiro. Alban made one brotherly inquiry about his dear sister, so long separated from him; his father gave him to hope he should soon see her, as she intended to visit Switzerland with the Countess. As I do not perceive what people will gain by it, if I insert those (to me) annoying geese-feet[13] with the everlasting "said he," I will relate the commission in person. There would, at a certain time (the Knight said), come to him three unknown persons,--one in the morning, one at noon, and one in the evening,--and each one would present him a card, in a sealed envelope, containing merely the name of the city and the house wherein the picture-cabinet, which Albano must visit the very same night, was to be found. In this cabinet he must touch and press all the nails of the pictures till he comes to one behind which the pressure makes a repeating-clock, built into the wall, strike twelve. Here he finds behind the picture a secret arras-door, behind which sits a female form with an open souvenir and three rings on her left hand, and a crayon in her right. When he presses the ring of the middle finger, the form will rise amidst the rolling of the internal wheel-work, step out into the chamber, and the wheel-work, which is running down, will stop with her at a wall whereon she indicates, by the crayon, a hidden compartment, in which lie a pocket-perspective glass and the waxen impression of a coffin-key. The eye-glass of the perspective arranges by an optical anamorphosis the snarl of withering lines on the medallion of his sister, which he had to-day received, into a sweet, young form, and the object-glass gives back to the immature image of his mother the lineaments of mature life. Then he is to press the ring-finger, and immediately the dumb, cold figure will begin to write with the crayon in the souvenir, and designate to him, in a few words, the place of the coffin, of whose key he has the waxen impression. In the coffin lies a black marble slab, in the form of a black Bible; and when he has broken it he will find a kernel therein, from which is to grow the Christmas-tree of his whole life. If the slab is not in the coffin, then he is to give the last ring of the little finger a pressure,--but what this wooden Guerike's weather-prophet of his destiny would do, the Knight himself could not predict. I am fully of opinion that from this bizarre testament the repeating-work and half of the wheel-work might easily be broken out, (just as clocks are now made in London with only two wheels,) without doing the dial-work or the movement of the hands the least injury.