by a single passion as by the chisel of a sculptor, that IDEA concentrated on some experiment criminal or scientific, that seeking Mind in quest of Nature, thwarted by her, bending but never broken under the weight of its own audacity, which it would not renounce, threatening creation with the fire it derived from it,—­ah! all that held me in a spell for the time being.  I saw before me an old man who was more of a king than I, for his glance embraced the world and mastered it.  I will forge swords no longer; I will soar above the abysses of existence, like that man; for his science, methinks, is true royalty!  Yes, I believe in occult science.”

“You, the eldest son, the defender of the Holy Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church?” said Marie.

“I.”

“What happened to you?  Go on, go on; I will fear for you, and you will have courage for me.”

“Looking at a clock, the old man rose,” continued the king.  “He went out, I don’t know where; but I heard the window on the side toward the rue Saint-Honore open.  Soon a brilliant light gleamed out upon the darkness; then I saw in the observatory of the hotel de Soissons another light replying to that of the old man, and by it I beheld the figure of Cosmo Ruggiero on the tower.  ‘See, they communicate!’ I said to Tavannes, who from that moment thought the matter frightfully suspicious, and agreed with me that we ought to seize the two men and search, incontinently, their accursed workshop.  But before proceeding to do so, we wanted to see what was going to happen.  After about fifteen minutes the door opened, and Cosmo Ruggiero, my mother’s counsellor,—­the bottomless pit which holds the secrets of the court, he from whom all women ask help against their husbands and lovers, and all the men ask help against their unfaithful wives and mistresses, he who traffics on the future as on the past, receiving pay with both hands, who sells horoscopes and is supposed to know all things,—­that semi-devil came in, saying to the old man, ‘Good-day to you, brother.’  With him he brought a hideous old woman,—­toothless, humpbacked, twisted, bent, like a Chinese image, only worse.  She was wrinkled as a withered apple; her skin was saffron-colored; her chin bit her nose; her mouth was a mere line scarcely visible; her eyes were like the black spots on a dice; her forehead emitted bitterness; her hair escaped in straggling gray locks from a dirty coif; she walked with a crutch; she smelt of heresy and witchcraft.  The sight of her actually frightened us, Tavannes and me!  We didn’t think her a natural woman.  God never made a woman so fearful as that.  She sat down on a stool near the pretty snake with whom Tavannes was in love.  The two brothers paid no attention to the old woman nor to the young woman, who together made a horrible couple,—­on the one side life in death, on the other death in life—­”

“Ah! my sweet poet!” cried Marie, kissing the king.