me
from? But now I can't help myself, I must have it."

"I don't do it often, child," returned Mme. Fontaine; "I only do it for
rich people on great occasions, and they pay me twenty-five louis for
doing it; it tires me, you see, it wears me out. The 'Spirit' rives my
inside, here. It is like going to the 'Sabbath,' as they used to say."

"But when I tell you that it means my whole future, my dear good Ma'am
Fontaine--"

"Well, as it is you that have come to consult me so often, I will submit
myself to the Spirit!" replied Mme. Fontaine, with a look of genuine
terror on her face.

She rose from her filthy old chair by the fireside, and went to a table
covered with a green cloth so worn that you could count the threads.
A huge toad sat dozing there beside a cage inhabited by a black
disheveled-looking fowl.

"Astaroth! here, my son!" she said, and the creature looked up
intelligently at her as she rapped him on the back with a long
knitting-needle.--"And you, Mademoiselle Cleopatre!--attention!" she
continued, tapping the ancient fowl on the beak.

Then Mme. Fontaine began to think; for several seconds she did not move;
she looked like a corpse, her eyes rolled in their sockets and grew
white; then she rose stiff and erect, and a cavernous voice cried:

"Here I am!"

Automatically she scattered millet for Cleopatre, took up the pack of
cards, shuffled them convulsively, and held them out to Mme. Cibot to
cut, sighing heavily all the time. At the sight of that image of Death
in the filthy turban and uncanny-looking bed-jacket, watching the black
fowl as it pecked at the millet-grains, calling to the toad Astaroth to
walk over the cards that lay out on the table, a cold thrill ran through
Mme. Cibot; she shuddered. Nothing but strong belief can give strong
emotions. An assured income, to be or not to be, that was the question.

The sorceress opened a magical work and muttered some unintelligible
words in a sepulchral voice, looked at the remaining millet-seeds, and
watched the way in which the toad retired. Then after seven or eight
minutes, she turned her white eyes on the cards and expounded them.

"You will succeed, although nothing in the affair will fall out as you
expect. You will have many steps to take, but you will reap the fruits
of your labors. You will behave very badly; it will be with you as it is
with all those who sit by a sick-bed and covet part of the inheritance.
Great people will help you in