ready questioned
her on the occasion of his early love troubles, and her replies showed
such wisdom that he no longer believed her to be a soothsayer. He
therefore had recourse to a fashionable medium, Madame Mira. He had
heard many examples quoted of the extraordinary insight of this seeress,
but it was necessary to present Madame Mira with some object which the
absent one had either touched or worn and to which her translucent gaze
had to be attracted. Maurice, trying to remember what the angel had
touched since his ill-fated incarnation, recollected that in his
celestial nudity he had sat down in an arm-chair on Madame des Aubels'
black stockings and that he had afterwards helped that lady to dress.

Maurice asked Gilberte for one of the talismans required by the
clairvoyante. But Gilberte could not give him a single one, unless, as
she said, she herself were to play the part of the talisman. For the
angel had, in her case, displayed the greatest indiscretion, and such
agility that it was impossible always to forestall his enterprise. On
hearing this confession, which nevertheless told him nothing new,
Maurice lost his temper with the angel, calling him by the names of the
lowest animals and swearing he would give him a good kick when he got
him within reach of his foot. But his fury soon turned against Madame
des Aubels; he accused her of having provoked the insolence she now
denounced, and in his wrath he referred to her by all the zoological
symbols of immodesty and perversity. His love for Arcade was rekindled
in his heart, and burned with a more ardent flame than ever, and the
deserted youth, with outstretched arms and bended knees, invoked his
angel with sobs and lamentations.

During his sleepless nights it occurred to him that perhaps the books
the angel had turned over before his incarnation might serve as a
talisman. One morning, therefore, Maurice went up to the library and
greeted Monsieur Sariette, who was cataloguing under the romantic gaze
of Alexandre d'Esparvieu. Monsieur Sariette smiled, but his face was
deathly pale. Now that an invisible hand no longer upset the books
placed under his charge, now that tranquillity and order once more
reigned in the library, Monsieur Sariette was happy, but his strength
diminished day by day. There was little left of him but a frail and
contented shadow.

"One dies, in full content, of sorrow past."

"Monsieur Sariette," said Maurice, "you remember that t