, since I could change it as the fancy seized me, to
whatsoever age and sex I would, has permitted me to experience the most
diverse and amazing of human destinies. A hundred times I took a
position of renown among the leaders of the day, the lords of wealth and
princes of nations. I will not reveal to you, Arcade, the famous names I
bore; know only that I was pre-eminent in learning, in the fine arts, in
power, wealth, and beauty, among all the nations of the world. At last,
it was but a few years since, as I was journeying in France, under the
outward semblance of a distinguished foreigner, I chanced to be roaming
at evening through the forest of Montmorency, when I heard a flute
unfolding all the sorrows of Heaven. The purity and sadness of its
notes rent my very soul. Never before had I hearkened to aught so
lovely. My eyes were wet with tears, my bosom full of sobs, as I drew
near and beheld, on the skirts of a glade, an old man like to a faun,
blowing on a rustic pipe. It was Nectaire. I cast myself at his feet,
imprinted kisses on his hands and on his lips divine, and fled away....

"From that day forth, conscious of the littleness of human achievements,
weary of the tumult and the vanity of earthly things, ashamed of my vast
and profitless endeavours, and deciding to seek out a loftier aim for my
ambition, I looked upwards towards my skiey home and vowed I would
return to it as a Deliverer. I rid myself of titles, name, wealth,
friends, the horde of sycophants and flatterers and, as Zita the
obscure, set to work in indigence and solitude, to bring freedom into
Heaven."

"And I," said Arcade, "I too have heard the flute of Nectaire. But who
is this old gardener who can thus woo from a rude wooden pipe notes that
are so moving and so beautiful?"

"You will soon know," answered Zita.

CHAPTER XVI

WHEREIN MIRA THE SEERESS, ZEPHYRINE, AND THE FATAL AMEDEE
ARE SUCCESSIVELY BROUGHT UPON THE SCENE, AND WHEREIN THE
NOTION OF EURIPIDES THAT THOSE WHOM ZEUS WISHES TO CRUSH HE
FIRST MAKES MAD, IS ILLUSTRATED BY THE TERRIBLE EXAMPLE OF
MONSIEUR SARIETTE

Disappointed at his failure to enlighten an ecclesiastic renowned for
his clarity of mind, and frustrated in the hope of finding his angel
again on the high road of orthodoxy, Maurice took it into his head to
resort to occultism and resolved to go and consult a seer. He would have
undoubtedly applied to Madame de Thebes, but he had al