But fancy my astonishment when, slowly turning, the great scholar faced
me, and I recognised the portrait of the famous lawyer Gregorius, marked
No. 253 in the portrait-gallery at Darmstadt.
How on earth had this personage walked out of his grave?
I was asking myself this question when, in a hollow sepulchral voice, he
pronounced these words:--
"_Dominorum, ex jure Quintio, est jus utendi et abutendi quatenus
naturalis ratio patitur_."
As this sapient precept dropped oracularly from his lips, a word at a
time, his figure faded and turned pale. With the last word he had passed
out of existence.
What more shall I tell you, my dear friends? For hours, twenty
generations came defiling past me in Hans Burckhardt's ancient
mansion--Christians and Jews, nobles and commoners, fools and wise men
of high art, and men of mere prose. Every one proclaimed his indefeasible
right to the property; every one firmly believed himself sole lord and
master of all he surveyed. Alas! Death breathed upon one after another,
and they were all carried out, each as his turn came!
I was beginning to be familiar with this strange phantasmagoria.
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