“Why do they attack him?”

“A thorough explanation would take a long time.  Johannes is commissioned by Heaven to break up the venomous practises of Satanism and to preach the coming of the glorified Christ and the divine Paraclete.  Now the diabolical Curia which holds the Vatican in its clutches has every reason of self-interest for putting out of the way a man whose prayers fetter their conjurements and neutralize their spells.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Durtal, “and would it be too much to ask you how this former priest foresees and checks these astonishing assaults?”

“No indeed.  The doctor can tell by the flight and cry of certain birds.  Falcons and male sparrow-hawks are his sentinels.  If they fly toward him or away from him, to East or West, whether they emit a single cry or many; these are omens, letting him know the hour of the combat so that he can be on guard.  Thus he told me one day, the sparrow-hawks are easily influenced by the spirits, and he uses them as the hypnotist makes use of somnambulism, as the spiritist makes use of tables and slates.”

“They are the telegraph wires for magic despatches.”

“Yes.  And of course you know that the method is not new.  Indeed, its origin is lost in the darkness of the ages.  Ornithomancy is world-old.  One finds traces of it in the Holy Bible, and the Zohar asserts that one may receive numerous notifications if one knows how to observe the flight and distinguish the cries of birds.”

“But,” said Durtal, “why is the sparrow-hawk chosen in preference to other birds?”

“Well, it has always been, since remotest antiquity, the harbinger of charms.  In Egypt the god with the head of a hawk was the one who possessed the science of the hieroglyphics.  Formerly in that country the hierogrammatists swallowed the heart and blood of the hawk to prepare themselves for the magic rites.  Even today African chiefs put a hawk feather in their hair, and this bird is sacred in India.”

“How does your friend go about it,” asked Mme. Carhaix, “raising and housing birds of prey?—­because that is what they are.”

“He does not raise them nor house them.  They nest in the high bluffs along the Saone, near Lyons.  They come and see him in time of need.”

Durtal, looking around this cozy dining-room and recalling the extraordinary conversations which had been held here, was thinking, “How far we are from the language and the ideas of modern times.—­All that takes us back to the Middle Ages,” he said, finishing his thought aloud.

“Happily!” exclaimed Carhaix, who was rising to go and ring his bells.

“Yes,” said Des Hermies, “and what is mighty strange in this day of crass materialism is the idea of battles fought in space, over the cities, between a priest of Lyons and prelates of Rome.”

“And between this priest and the Rosicrusians and Canon Docre.”

Durtal remembered that Mme. Chantelouve had assured him that the chiefs of the Rosicrucians were making frantic efforts to establish connections with the devil and prepare spells.