ch the past or the future is reflected to their minds become clouded
by the breath of a personal feeling, by an idea foreign to the purpose
of the power they are exerting, sorcerers and sorceresses can see
nothing; just as an artist who blurs art with political combinations and
systems loses his genius. Not long ago, a man endowed with the gift
of divining by cards, a rival to Madame Fontaine, became addicted to
vicious practices, and being unable to tell his own fate from the cards,
was arrested, tried, and condemned at the court of assizes. Madame
Fontaine, who predicts the future eight times out of ten, was never able
to know if she would win or lose in a lottery."

"It is the same thing in magnetism," remarked Bixiou. "A man can't
magnetize himself."

"Heavens! now we come to magnetism!" cried Gazonal. "Ah ca! do you know
everything?"

"Friend Gazonal," replied Bixiou, gravely, "to be able to laugh at
everything one must know everything. As for me, I've been in Paris since
my childhood; I've lived, by means of my pencil, on its follies and
absurdities, at the rate of five caricatures a month. Consequently, I
often laugh at ideas in which I have faith."

"Come, let us get to something else," said Leon. "We'll go to the
Chamber and settle the cousin's affair."

"This," said Bixiou, imitating Odry in "Les Funambules," "is high
comedy, for we will make the first orator we meet pose for us, and you
shall see that in those halls of legislation, as elsewhere, the Parisian
language has but two tones,--Self-interest, Vanity."

As they got into their citadine, Leon saw in a rapidly driven cabriolet
a man to whom he made a sign that he had something to say to him.

"There's Publicola Masson," said Leon to Bixiou. "I'm going to ask for
a sitting this evening at five o'clock, after the Chamber. The cousin
shall then see the most curious of all the originals."

"Who is he?" asked Gazonal, while Leon went to speak to Publicola
Masson.

"An artist-pedicure," replied Bixiou, "author of a 'Treatise on
Corporistics,' who cuts your corns by subscription, and who, if the
Republications triumph for six months, will assuredly become immortal."

"Drives his carriage!" ejaculated Gazonal.

"But, my good Gazonal, it is only millionaires who have time to go afoot
in Paris."

"To the Chamber!" cried Leon to the coachman, getting back into the
carriage.

"Which, monsieur?"

"Deputies," replied Leon, exchanging a smile with Bix