know about, like every one born under
the sign of the Cancer, has a warm heart and great pride. He is
powerful. He has lived nearly a quarter of a century. He has until now
had glory and wealth. Is this so, madame?"

"Possibly," said Catharine.

"Have you a lock of his hair, and some of his blood?"

"Yes."

Catharine handed to the necromancer a lock of fair hair and a small
bottle filled with blood.

Rene took the flask, shook it thoroughly, so that the fibrine and water
would mix, and poured a large drop of it on the glowing steel. The
living liquid boiled for an instant, and then spread out into fantastic
figures.

"Oh, madame," cried Rene, "I see him twisting in awful agony. Hear how
he groans, how he calls for help! Do you see how everything around him
becomes blood? Do you see how about his death-bed great combats are
taking place? See, here are the lances; and look, there are the swords!"

"Will it be long before this happens?" asked Catharine, trembling from
an indescribable emotion and laying her hand on that of Henry of Anjou,
who in his eager curiosity was leaning over the brazier.

Rene approached the altar and repeated a cabalistic prayer, putting such
energy and conviction into the act that the veins of his temples
swelled, and caused the prophetic convulsions and nervous twinges from
which the ancient priestesses suffered before their tripods, and even on
their death-beds.

At length he rose and announced that everything was ready, took the
flask, still three-quarters full, in one hand, and in the other the lock
of hair. Then telling Catharine to open the book at random, and to read
the first words she looked at, he poured the rest of the blood on the
steel blade, and threw the hair into the brazier, pronouncing a
cabalistic sentence composed of Hebrew words which he himself did not
understand.

Instantly the Duc d'Anjou and Catharine saw a white figure appear on the
sword like that of a corpse wrapped in his shroud. Another figure, which
seemed that of a woman, was leaning over the first.

At the same time the hair caught fire and threw out a single flame,
clear, swift, and barbed like a fiery tongue.

"One year," cried Rene, "scarcely one year, and this man shall die. A
woman alone shall weep for him. But no, there at the end of the sword is
another woman, with a child in her arms."

Catharine looked at her son, and, mother though she was, seemed to ask
him who these two women were.