Fancy's Show-Box (From "Twice Told Tales")

In a quiet, candle‑lit study an elderly gentleman sips aged Madeira, his mind adrift in the solitude of age. Suddenly three strange visitors appear: Fancy, a traveling showman with a box of ever‑changing pictures; Memory, a clerk‑like keeper of a massive manuscript; and a cloaked figure who is hinted to be Conscience itself. Their unexpected arrival turns a simple evening into a probing discussion about whether imagined sins can stain a soul as surely as deeds done in daylight.

When Fancy opens her show‑box, the old man peers through a magnifying glass at a moonlit tableau that startlingly resembles his own first love and a long‑forgotten betrayal. The image forces him to weigh memory against moral judgment, while Memory and Conscience hover nearby, ready to record and challenge his reaction. Listeners are invited into a compact moral parable that explores how guilt, imagination, and self‑reflection intertwine long before any courtroom ever convenes.