al might feel in presence of a gendarme. He
endeavoured to brace himself by looking at Madame Fontaine; but there
he encountered two almost white eyes, the motionless and icy pupils of
which were absolutely intolerable to him. The silence became terrifying.

"Which do you wish, monsieur, the five-franc fortune, the ten-franc
fortune, or the grand game?"

"The five-franc fortune is dear enough," replied the Southerner, making
powerful efforts not to yield to the influence of the surroundings in
which he found himself.

At the moment when Gazonal was thus endeavouring to collect himself,
a voice--an infernal voice--made him bound in his chair; the black hen
clucked.

"Go back, my daughter, go back; monsieur chooses to spend only five
francs."

The hen seemed to understand her mistress, for, after coming within a
foot of the cards, she turned and resumed her former place.

"What flower to you like best?" asked the old woman, in a voice
hoarsened by the phlegm which seemed to rise and fall incessantly in her
bronchial tubes.

"The rose."

"What color are you fond of?"

"Blue."

"What animal do you prefer?"

"The horse. Why these questions?" he asked.

"Man derives his form from his anterior states," she said sententiously.
"Hence his instincts; and his instincts rule his destiny. What food
do you like best to eat,--fish, game, cereals, butcher's meat, sweet
things, vegetables, or fruits?"

"Game."

"In what month where you born?"

"September."

"Put out your hand."

Madame Fontaine looked attentively at the lines of the hand that was
shown to her. It was all done seriously, with no pretence of sorcery; on
the contrary, with the simplicity a notary might have shown when asking
the intentions of a client about a deed. Presently she shuffled the
cards, and asked Gazonal to cut them, and then to make three packs of
them himself. After which she took the packs, spread them out before
her, and examined them as a gambler examines the thirty-six numbers at
roulette before he risks his stake. Gazonal's bones were freezing; he
seemed not to know where he was; but his amazement grew greater and
greater when this hideous old woman in a green bonnet, stout and squat,
whose false front was frizzed into points of interrogation, proceeded,
in a thick voice, to relate to him all the particular circumstances,
even the most secret, of his past life: she told him his tastes, his
habits, his character; the thoughts of h