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We realised the sense of hopeless expectation described by Fielding in his Voyage to Lisbon, which identical tract Captain Hall, who in his eagerness to be kind seems in possession of the wishing-cap of Fortunatus, was able to provide for us. To-morrow is spoken of as certainly a day to move. October 28.
"No," replied the virtuoso; "it is merely Dr. Franklin's cap of asbestos. But here is one which, perhaps, may suit you better. It is the wishing-cap of Fortunatus. Will you try it on?" "By no means," answered I, putting it aside with my hand. "The day of wild wishes is past with me. I desire nothing that may not come in the ordinary course of Providence."
In that culture and in that social order much of what Ausonius and Sidonius and even Fortunatus represented was brought to life again, albeit in a form they would not always have recognized as their own. To this extent, at least, they were not only the epigones of Rome but the true precursors of the Middle Ages.
And he related with great earnestness his experience in the gambling saloon. Not content with that the sealed fountains of his childish deep being broken up by some mysterious sympathy he spoke of his hospitable exploit with the passengers at the wayside bar, of the finding of his Fortunatus purse and his deposit at the bank.
So a ship was bought big enough to hold Fortunatus, the old man and his wife, and their ten children five of them sons and five daughters. And the day before they sailed the wedding was celebrated with magnificent rejoicings, and everybody thought that Fortunatus must certainly be a prince in disguise.
The baby and younger children were in bed. The elders of the family, some relatives, and ourselves had been engaged in a lively discussion; or, rather, I had been discussing matters with the count, while the others joined in from time to time. It began with the Moscow beggars. "I understand them now, and what you wrote of them," I said. "I have neither the purse of Fortunatus nor a heart of flint.
You may smile at this story if you like, but, all the same, as certainly as there is meat in an egg-shell, so is there truth in this nonsense. For, "Give a fool heaven and earth," say I, "and all the stars, and he will make ducks and drakes of them." Fortunatus lifted his canican to his lips and took a long, hearty draught of ale.
When Crauford's guilt and imprisonment became known; when inquiry developed, day after day, some new maze in the mighty and intricate machinery of his sublime dishonesty; when houses of the most reputed wealth and profuse splendour, whose affairs Crauford had transacted, were discovered to have been for years utterly undermined and beggared, and only supported by the extraordinary genius of the individual by whose extraordinary guilt, now no longer concealed, they were suddenly and irretrievably destroyed; when it was ascertained that, for nearly the fifth part of a century, a system of villany had been carried on throughout Europe, in a thousand different relations, without a single breath of suspicion, and yet which a single breath of suspicion could at once have arrested and exposed; when it was proved that a man whose luxury had exceeded the pomp of princes, and whose wealth was supposed more inexhaustible than the enchanted purse of Fortunatus, had for eighteen years been a penniless pensioner upon the prosperity of others; when the long scroll of this almost incredible fraud was slowly, piece by piece, unrolled before the terrified curiosity of his public, an invading army at the Temple gates could scarcely have excited such universal consternation and dismay.
This style is appropriate to large and dignified country houses. The architect must see that the background is correct. The Renaissance period should not be attempted as a style to furnish one's house unless it can be carried out properly. The house should be large and architecturally correct, and there should be at least a near relation of a Fortunatus purse to draw upon.
The sultan was so much pleased with this, that he ordered a hundred casks of spices to be given to Fortunatus in return. Fortunatus sent these straight to the Lady Cassandra, with the most tender letters, by the same ship that brought him, which was then going back to Famagosta.
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