_Superstition_, and he avowed to me that he had been afraid,
relatively as to his proper power, once only, and that was on the day
when he had heard a preacher, more subtle than the rest of the human
herd, cry in his pulpit: "My dear brethren, do not ever forget, when
you hear the progress of lights praised, that the loveliest trick of
the Devil is to persuade you that he does not exist!"

The memory of this famous orator brought us naturally on the subject
of Academies, and my strange host declared to me that he didn't
disdain, in many cases, to inspire the pens, the words, and the
consciences of pedagogues, and that he almost always assisted in
person, in spite of being invisible, at all the scientific meetings.

Encouraged by so much kindness I asked him if he had any news of
God--who has not his hours of impiety?--especially as the old friend
of the Devil. He said to me, with a shade of unconcern united with a
deeper shade of sadness: "We salute each other when we meet." But, for
the rest, he spoke in Hebrew.

It is uncertain if his Highness has ever given so long an audience to
a simple mortal, and I feared to abuse it.

Finally, as the dark approached shivering, this famous personage, sung
by so many poets, and served by so many philosophers who work for his
glory's sake without being aware of it, said to me: "I want you to
remember me always, and to prove to you that I--of whom one says so
much evil--am often enough _bon diable_, to make use of one of your
vulgar locutions. So as to make up for the irremediable loss that you
have made of your soul, I shall give you back the stake you ought to
have gained, if your fate had been fortunate--that is to say, the
possibility of solacing and of conquering, during your whole life,
this bizarre affection of _ennui_, which is the source of all your
maladies and of all your miseries. Never a desire shall be formed by
you that I will not aid you to realize; you will reign over your
vulgar equals; money and gold and diamonds, fairy palaces, shall come
to seek you and shall ask you to accept them without your having made
the least effort to obtain them; you can change your abode as often as
you like; you shall have in your power all sensualities without
lassitude, in lands where the climate is always hot, and where the
women are as scented as the flowers." With this he rose up and said
good-bye to me with a charming smile.

If it had not been for the shame of humiliating