“It seems to me, on the contrary, that astrology is picking up,” said Durtal.  “There are now two astrologers casting horoscopes in the next column to the secret remedies on the fourth page of the newspapers.”

“And it’s a shame!  Those people don’t even know the first thing about the science.  They are simply tricksters who hope thus to pick up some money.  What’s the use of speaking of them when they don’t even exist!  Really it must be admitted that only in England and America is there anybody who knows how to establish the genethliac theme and construct a horoscope.”

“I am very much afraid,” said Des Hermies, “that not only these so-called astrologers, but also all the mages, theosophists, occultists, and cabalists of the present day, know absolutely nothing—­those with whom I am acquainted are indubitably, incontestably, ignorant imbeciles.  And that is the pure truth, messieurs.  These people are, for the most part, down-and-out journalists or broken spendthrifts seeking to exploit the taste of a public weary of positivism.  They plagiarize Eliphas Levi, steal from Fabre d’Olivet, and write treatises of which they themselves are incapable of making head or tail.  It’s a real pity, when you come to think of it.”

“The more so as they discredit sciences which certainly contain verities omitted in their jumble,” said Durtal.

“Then another lamentable thing,” said Des Hermies, “is that in addition to the dupes and simpletons, these little sects harbour some frightful charlatans and windbags.”

“Peladan, among others.  Who does not know that shoddy mage, commercialized to his fingertips?” cried Durtal.

“Oh, yes, that fellow—­”

“Briefly, messieurs,” resumed Gevingey, “all these people are incapable of obtaining in practise any effect whatever.  The only man in this century who, without being either a saint or a diabolist, has penetrated the mysteries, is William Crookes.”  And as Durtal, who appeared to doubt the apparitions sworn to by this Englishman, declared that no theory could explain them, Gevingey perorated, “Permit me, messieurs.  We have the choice between two diverse, and I venture to say, very clear-cut doctrines.  Either the apparition is formed by the fluid disengaged by the medium in trance to combine with the fluid of the persons present; or else there are in the air immaterial beings, elementals as they are called, which manifest themselves under very nearly determinable conditions; or else, and this is the theory of pure spiritism, the phenomena are produced by souls evoked from the dead.”

“I know it,” Durtal said, “and that horrifies me.  I know also the Hindu dogma of the migrations of souls after death.  These disembodied souls stray until they are reincarnated or until they attain, from avatar to avatar, to complete purity.  Well, I think it’s quite enough to live once.  I’d prefer nothingness, a hole in the ground, to all those metamorphoses.  It’s more consoling to me.  As for the evocation of the dead, the mere thought that the butcher on the corner can force the soul of Hugo, Balzac, Baudelaire, to converse with him, would put me beside myself, if I believed it.  Ah, no.  Materialism, abject as it is, is less vile than that.”