key, as I had taught her,
and as she was ready to get the answer, I told her how to make the
additions and subtractions which seem to come from the numbers, but which
in reality are only arbitrary; then I told her to interpret the numbers
in letters, and I left the room under some pretext. I came back when I
thought that she had completed her translation, and I found her wrapped
in amazement.

"Ah, sir!" she exclaimed, "what an answer!"

"Perhaps it is not the right one; but that will sometimes happen, madam."

"Not the right one, sir? It is divine! Here it is: That pomatum has no
effect upon the skin of a woman who has been a mother."

"I do not see anything extraordinary in that answer, madam."

"Very likely, sir, but it is because you do not know that the pomatum in
question was given to me five years ago by the Abbe de Brosses; it cured
me at that time, but it was ten months before the birth of the Duke de
Montpensier. I would give anything in the world to be thoroughly
acquainted with that sublime cabalistic science."

"What!" said the count, "is it the pomatum the history of which I know?"

"Precisely."

"It is astonishing."

"I wish to ask one more question concerning a woman the name of whom I
would rather not give."

"Say the woman whom I have in my thoughts."

She then asked this question: "What disease is that woman suffering
from?" She made the calculation, and the answer which I made her bring
forth was this: "She wants to deceive her husband." This time the duchess
fairly screamed with astonishment.

It was getting very late, and I was preparing to take leave, when M. de
Melfort, who was speaking to her highness, told me that we might go
together. When we were out, he told me that the cabalistic answer
concerning the pomatum was truly wonderful. This was the history of it:

"The duchess, pretty as you see her now, had her face so fearfully
covered with pimples that the duke, thoroughly disgusted, had not the
courage to come near her to enjoy his rights as a husband, and the poor
princess was pining with useless longing to become a mother. The Abbe de
Brosses cured her with that pomatum, and her beautiful face having
entirely recovered it original bloom she made her appearance at the
Theatre Francais, in the queen's box. The Duke de Chartres, not knowing
that his wife had gone to the theatre, where she went but very seldom,
was in the king's box. He did not recognize the duchess, but thinkin