“Well, it has its advantages over divorce, that system has.”

She pouted.  “I shan’t say another word.  I think you are making fun of me.  You don’t believe in anything—­”

“Indeed.  I was not laughing at you.  I haven’t very precise ideas on this subject.  I admit that at first blush all this seems improbable, to say the least.  But when I think that all the efforts of modern science do but confirm the discoveries of the magic of other days, I keep my mouth shut.  It is true,” he went on after a silence,—­“to cite only one fact—­that people can no longer laugh at the stories of women being changed into cats in the Middle Ages.  Recently there was brought to M. Charcot a little girl who suddenly got down on her hands and knees and ran and jumped around, scratching and spitting and arching her back.  So that metamorphosis is possible.  No, one cannot too often repeat it, the truth is that we know nothing and have no right to deny anything.  But to return to your Rosicrucians.  Using purely chemical formulae, they get along without sacrilege?”

“That is as much as to say that their venefices—­supposing they know how to prepare them well enough to accomplish their purpose, though I doubt that—­are easy to defeat.  Yet I don’t mean to say that this group, one member of which is an ordained priest, does not make use of contaminated Eucharists at need.”

“Another nice priest!  But since you are so well informed, do you know how spells are conjured away?”

“Yes and no.  I know that when the poisons are sealed by sacrilege, when the operation is performed by a master, Docre or one of the princes of magic at Rome, it is not at all easy—­nor healthy—­to attempt to apply an antidote.  Though I have heard of a certain abbe at Lyons who, practically alone, is succeeding right now in these difficult cures.”

“Dr. Johannes!”

“You know him!”

“No.  But Gevingey, who has gone to seek his medical aid, has told me of him.”

“Well, I don’t know how he goes about it, but I know that spells which are not complicated with sacrilege are usually evaded by the law of return.  The blow is sent back to him who struck it.  There are, at the present time, two churches, one in Belgium, the other in France, where, when one prays before a statue of the Virgin, the spell which has been cast on one flies off and goes and strikes one’s adversary.”

“Rats!”

“One of these churches is at Tougres, eighteen kilometres from Liege, and the name of it is Notre Dame de Retour.  The other is the church of l’Epine, ‘the thorn,’ a little village near Chalons.  This church was built long ago to conjure away the spells produced with the aid of the thorns which grew in that country and served to pierce images cut in the shape of hearts.”

“Near Chalons,” said Durtal, digging in his memory, “it does seem to me now that Des Hermies, speaking of bewitchment by the blood of white mice, pointed out that village as the habitation of certain diabolic circles.”