I left school without the slightest notion as to what my future
course in life was to be. I was to take my rich uncle's property.
That was understood now. And although my mother never talked of the
matter, I could see in the pensive gaze she bent on me an
ever-present consciousness of a future for me more golden still.
But now I formed a new intimacy, and one of a very singular kind--an
intimacy with my father, who suddenly woke up to the fact that I was
no longer a child. It occurred on my making some pertinent inquiries
about a certain Gnostic amulet representing the Gorgon's head, a
prize of which he had lately become the happy possessor. On his
telling me that the Arabic word for amulet was _hamalet_, and that
the word meant 'that which is suspended,' I said in a perfectly
thoughtless way that very likely one of the learned societies to
which he belonged might be able to trace some connection between
'hamalet' and the 'Hamlet' of Shakespeare. These idle and ignorant
words of mine fell, as I found, upon a mind ripe to receive them.
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