Reaching the house, he went rapidly up the stairway, and rang at the door of an apartment on the first floor.

“Is my aunt at home?” he inquired of the Negro who opened it.  Then he followed the man, and was presently ushered into a salon where the Negro announced,—­

“Monsieur de Saint-Esteve.”

The salon which the famous chief of the detective police now entered was remarkable for the luxury, but still more for the horribly bad taste, of its appointments.  Three women of advanced age were seated round a card-table earnestly employed in a game of dominoes.  Three glasses and an empty silver bowl which gave forth a vinous odor showed that the worship of double-sixes was not without its due libations.

“Good evening, mesdames,” said the chief of police, sitting down; “for I have something to say to each of you.”

“We’ll listen presently,” said his aunt; “you can’t interrupt the game.  It won’t be long; I play for four.”

“White all round!” said one of the hags.

“Domino!” cried the Saint-Esteve.  “I win; you have four points between you two, and the whites are all out.  Well, my dear, what is it?” she said, turning to her nephew, after a rather stormy reckoning among the witches was over.

“You, Madame Fontaine,” said the chief of police, addressing one of the venerable beings, whose head was covered with disorderly gray hair and a battered green bonnet,—­“you neglect your duty; you have sent me no report, and, on the contrary, I get many complaints of you.  The prefect has a great mind to close your establishment.  I protect you on account of the services you are supposed to render us; but if you don’t render them, I warn you, without claiming any gifts of prediction, that your fate-shop will be shut up.”

“There now!” replied the pythoness, “you prevented me from hiring Mademoiselle Lenormand’s apartment in the rue de Tournon, and how can you expect me to make reports about the cooks and clerks and workmen and grisettes who are all I get where I am?  If you had let me work among the great folks, I’d make you reports and plenty of them.”

“I don’t see how you can say that, Madame Fontaine,” said Madame de Saint-Esteve.  “I am sure I send you all my clients.  It was only the other day,” continued the matrimonial agent, “I sent you that Italian singer, living with a deputy who is against the government; why didn’t you report about that?”

“There’s another thing,” said the chief of police, “which appears in several of the complaints that I received about you,—­that nasty animal—­”

“What, Astaroth?” said Madame Fontaine.

“Yes, that batrachian, that toad, to come down to his right name.  It seems he nearly killed a woman who was pregnant—­”

“Well, well,” interrupted the sorceress, “if I am to tell fortunes alone, you might as well guillotine me at once.  Because a fool of a woman lay-in with a dead child, must toads be suppressed in nature?  Why did God make them?”