Gevingey this abomination is more perilous
yet, he stuffs fishes with communion bread and with toxins skilfully
graduated. These toxins are chosen from those which produce madness or
lockjaw when absorbed through the pores. Then, when these fishes are
thoroughly permeated with the substances sealed by sacrilege, Docre
takes them out of the water, lets them rot, distills them, and expresses
from them an essential oil one drop of which will produce madness. This
drop, it appears, is applied externally, by touching the hair, as in
Balzac's _Thirteen_."

"Hmmm," said Durtal, "I am afraid that a drop of this oil long ago fell
on the scalp of poor old Gevingey."

"What is interesting about this story is not the outlandishness of these
diabolical pharmacopoeia so much as the psychology of the persons who
invent and manipulate them. Think. This is happening at the present day,
and it is the priests who have invented philtres unknown to the
sorcerers of the Middle Ages."

"The priests, no! A priest. And what a priest!" remarked Carhaix.

"Gevingey is very precise. He affirms that others use them. Bewitchment
by veniniferous blood of mice took place in 1879 at Chalons-sur-Marne in
a demoniac circle--to which the canon belonged, it is true. In 1883, in
Savoy, the oil of which I have spoken was prepared in a group of
defrocked abbes. As you see, Docre is not the only one who practises
this abominable science. It is known in the convents; some laymen, even,
have an inkling of it."

"But now, admitting that these preparations are real and that they are
active, you have not explained how one can poison a man with them either
from a distance or near at hand."

"Yes, that's another matter. One has a choice of two methods to reach
the enemy one is aiming at. The first and least used is this: the
magician employs a voyant, a woman who is known in that world as 'a
flying spirit'; she is a somnambulist, who, put into a hypnotic state,
can betake herself, in spirit, wherever one wishes her to go. It is then
possible to have her transmit the magic poisons to a person whom one
designates, hundreds of leagues away. Those who are stricken in this
manner have seen no one, and they go mad or die without suspecting the
venefice. But these voyants are not only rare, they are also unreliable,
because other persons can likewise fix them in a cataleptic state and
extract confessions from them. So you see why persons like Docre have
recourse to t