'
Then he pointed out the _Hexameron_ of Torquemada and the _Tableau de
l'Inconstance des Demons_, by Delancre; he drew his finger down the
leather back of Delrio's _Disquisitiones Magicae_ and set upright the
_Pseudomonarchia Daemonorum_ of Wierus; his eyes rested for an instant on
Hauber's _Acta et Scripta Magica_, and he blew the dust carefully off the
most famous, the most infamous, of them all, Sprenger's _Malleus
Malefikorum_.
'Here is one of my greatest treasures. It is the _Clavicula Salomonis_;
and I have much reason to believe that it is the identical copy which
belonged to the greatest adventurer of the eighteenth century, Jacques
Casanova. You will see that the owner's name had been cut out, but enough
remains to indicate the bottom of the letters; and these correspond
exactly with the signature of Casanova which I have found at the
Bibliotheque Nationale. He relates in his memoirs that a copy of this
book was seized among his effects when he was arrested in Venice for
traffic in the black arts; and it was there, on one of my journeys from
Alexandria, that I picked it up.
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