Already surrounded by a crowd of admirers waiting for the words of wisdom to fall from his lips, he would start on that exordium which bore no little resemblance to the patter of the modern quack, albeit interlarded with many a Latin quotation and great display of mediaeval learning.

"Good people and worthy citizens of this town," he might say, "behold in me the great master ...

prince of necromancers, astrologer, second mage, chiromancer, agromancer, pyromancer, hydromancer.

My learning is so profound that were all the works of Plato and Aristotle lost to the world I could from memory restore them with more elegance than before.

The miracles of Christ were not so great as those which I can perform wherever and as often as I will.