o have your fortune told. Shall I look
in the crystal for you and tell you nice things about--what shall we
say? About the past of that handsome Madame of yours, for instance? Oh!
I will do it for love, yes, for love. Or shall I make that mummy speak
for you? I can, for once I lived in that body of hers--it was a gay
life," and she stopped, gasping.

"Hearken, woman," said the Pasteur, "and do not think to frighten me. I
know all about my wife, and, if once she was foolish, what of it in a
world where none are altogether wise? If you do not wish to visit the
police cell, you will do well to leave her alone. As for your tricks of
chicanery, I want none of them. What I want is that you take off the
spell which you have laid upon this poor boy, as Satan your master has
given you the power to do. Now, obey me--or----"

"Or? Or what, you old paid advocate of God?"

"That is a good term. If I am an advocate, I know my Employer's mind,
I, who have taken His fee, and am therefore in honour bound to serve
Him faithfully. Now I will tell you His mind about you. It is that
unless you change your ways and repent, soon you will go to hell. Yes,
quite soon, I think, for one so fat cannot be very strong in the heart.
Do what I bid you, Madame, or I, the advocate of God, having His
authority, will curse you in the Name of God, and in the ancient form
of which you may have heard."

"Bah! would you frighten me, the great Madame Riennes who have spirits
at my command and who, as you admit, can lay on spells and take them
off. A flea for you and your God!"

"Spirits at your command! Yes, some of them in there, I think," and he
pointed to the black bottle on the table, "and others too, perhaps; I
will not deny it. Well, let them advance, and we will see who is on the
top of the mountain, I, the old paid advocate of God, or you and your
spirits, Madame," and hooking the handle of the big umbrella over his
wrist, he folded his arms and stared at her through the blue spectacles.

Madame Riennes gibbered some invocation, but nothing happened.

"I await your spirits. They cannot have gone to bed so early," remarked
the Pasteur like a new Elijah.

Then, also like Elijah, to use a vulgarism, he "sailed in" after a way
which even the terrified Godfrey, who was crouching against one of the
purple curtains, felt to be really magnificent with such artistic sense
as remained to him. In his mediaeval Latin which, spoken with a foreign
accent, G