“You cannot have seen Fortnoye,” said one of the party:  “he is at Paris.”

“And who is your Fortnoye, pray?” I asked.

“The best tenor voice in Epernay; but his presence here does not give me an invitation, you see.  The Society of Pure Illumination has its rites and mysteries more important than everybody supposes, and probably complicated with board-of-trade secrets among the wine-merchants.  We have hit upon a bad time.  Let us go and visit another cellar.”

There was opposition to this measure:  different opinions were expressed, and I was chosen for moderator.

“My dear boys,” I said, “as the grayest among you I may be presumed to be the wisest.  But I do not feel myself to be myself.  I have received to-day a succession of unaccustomed influences.  I have been dragged about by an impertinent locomotive; I have been induced to dine heavily; I have absorbed champagne, perhaps to the limit of my measure.  These are not my ordinary ways:  I am naturally thoughtful, studious and pensive.  The Past, gentlemen, is for me an unfaded morning-glory, whose closed cup I can coax open at pleasure, and read within its tube legends written in dusted gold.  But the Present to the true philosopher is also—­In fact, I never was so much amused in my life.  I am dying to see what they will do with that Scotchman.”

[Illustration:  The animated cells]

Athanasius submitted.  At the end of one of the cross galleries we could already see a flickering glimmer of torches.  There, evidently, was held the council.  We stole on tiptoe in that direction, and ensconced ourselves behind a long file of empty bottle-shelves, worn out after long service and leaning against a wall.

Through the holes which had fixed the bottles in position we could see everything without being discovered.  The grand dignitaries, sitting in a semicircle, were about to proceed from physical to moral tests.  Before them, his red nose hanging like a cameo from the white bandage which covered his eyes, and relieved upon his face, still perfectly white and calm, stood the Scot.  The Grand Master arose—­I should have said the Reverend—­his head nodding with senility, his beard white as a waterfall:  he appeared to be eighty years of age at least.  He was truly venerable to look at, and reminded me of Thor.  He wore a sort of dalmatica embroidered with gold.  Calmness and goodness were so plainly marked on the aspect of this worthy that I felt ashamed of playing the spy, and felt inclined to return humbly to the good counsel of Athanasius, when the latter, pushing my elbow behind the shelves, said, referring to the Ancient of the Mountain, “That’s Fortnoye:  I knew I couldn’t be mistaken.”

I was greatly mystified at discovering the first tenor voice of Epernay in an aged man; but the catechism now commencing, I thought only of listening.