en God!" cried the Abbe.

"Why?"

"I believe with Novalis that 'love is the highest reality,'" replied
Gerard; then he added with a laugh, "No, Duke, what you saw was an
emanation from yourself--a master passion. It was the corporeal
embodiment of your love of pigeon-shooting!"

"Perhaps," laughed the Duke.

"I tell you what, _mon ami_," said Pomerantseff rising, as he saw the
Abbe making preparations to depart. "I am glad that my appetite,
corporealized and separated from my discretion, is not in your wine
cellar. Your Johannisberg would suffer!"

"Prince, you must drive me home," said the Abbe. "I cannot get into a
draughty cab at this hour of the night."

"_Tres volontiers!_ Good night, Duke. Remember to-morrow morning, at
half-past nine, at the Gare de Lyon," said the Prince.

"Remember to-morrow night at half-past ten, at Mme. de Langeac's,"
bawled the Abbe; and so they left. The young nobleman hurried down the
cold staircase and into the Prince's brougham.

"What a pity," exclaimed the Abbe when they were once fairly started,
"that a man with all the mind of De Frontignan should give himself up to
such wild ideas and dreams!"

"You are not very complimentary," rejoined the other smiling gravely;
"for you know that so far as believing in spirits I am as bad if not
worse than he is."

"Ah, but _you_ are jesting."

"On my honor as a gentleman, I am not jesting. See here." As he spoke
Pomerantseff seized the Abbe's hand. "You heard me tell the Duke just
now that I believed he had seen the spirit of love. Well, the sermon you
preached the day before yesterday, which all Paris is talking about, and
in which you endeavored to prove the personality of the devil to be a
fact, was truer than perhaps you believed when you preached it. Why
should not Frontignan have seen the spirit of love _when I know and have
seen the devil_?"

"_Mon ami_, you are insane!" cried Gerard. "Why, the devil does not
exist!"

"I tell you I have seen him--the God of all Evil, the Prince of
Desolation!" cried the other in an excited voice. "And what is more, _I
will show him to you_!"

"Show the devil to _me_!" exclaimed the Abbe, half terrified, half
amused. "Why, you are out of your mind!"

The Prince laid his other hand upon the arm of the Abbe, who could feel
he was trembling with excitement.

"You know my address," he said in a quick, passionate voice. "When you
feel--as I tell you you surely will--desirous of investigati