At this the Syrian clapped his hands, exclaiming:  “And you propose to use Philip as your signbearer to talk to the emperor of a thaumaturgist who is hand in hand with all the learning of the Museum?  A cursed good idea!  But the gem-cutter’s son does not look like a simpleton; and he is a skeptic into the bargain, and believes in nothing.  If you catch him, I shall really and truly believe in your miraculous powers.”

“There are harder things than catching him,” said the Magian.

“You mean to break his will,” said the Syrian, looking down at the ground, “by your eye and the laying on of hands, as you did mine and Triphis’s two years ago?”

“That, no doubt, formed the first bond between us,” said Serapion.  “I now need only your ventriloquism.  Philip himself will come half-way to meet me on the main point.”

“And what is that?”

“You called him a skeptic, and he does, in fact, pride himself on going further than the old masters of the school.  Diligent study has brought him to the point of regarding nothing as certain, but, on the other hand, everything as possible.  The last result he can arrive at is the probability—­since certainty there is none—­that it is impossible ever to know anything, be it what it may.  He is always ready to listen with sympathetic attention to the arguments for the reappearance of the souls of the dead in the earthly form they have quitted, to visit and converse with the living.  He considers it a fallacy to say that anything is impossible; and my arguments are substantial.  Korinna will appear to him.  Castor has discovered a girl who is her very image.  Your arts will convince him that it is she who speaks to him, for he never heard her voice in life, and all this must rouse his desire to see her again and again.  And thus the skeptic will be convinced, in spite of his own doctrine.  In this, as in every other case, it is the passionate wish that gives rise to the belief.”

“And when you have succeeded in getting him to this point?” asked the Syrian, anxiously.

“Then,” replied the Magian, “he will help me, with his triumphant dialectics, to win Caesar over to the same conviction; and then we shall be able to satisfy the emperor’s desire to hold intercourse with the dead; and for that I count on your power of making voices proceed from any person present.”

He said no more.  The little man looked up at him approvingly, and said, modestly:  “You are indeed wise, Serapion, and I will do my best to help you.  The next thing to be done is to seek representatives of the great Alexander, of Apollonius of Tyana, and of Caesar’s brother, father-in-law, and wife.”

“Not forgetting Papinian, the noblest of his victims,” added the Magian.  “Back again already, Castor?”

These words were addressed to a tall and apparently elderly man in a long white robe, who had slipped in without a sound.  His demeanor was so grave and dignified that he looked precisely like a Christian priest impressed with the sanctity of his office; but hardly had he got into the room, and greeted the Magian with much unction, than he pulled the white garment off over his head, rubbed from his cheeks the lines which gave him twenty added years, stretched his lithe limbs, and exclaimed with delight: