that day they never asked me again to teach them.  They very likely thought that, if they could attach me to them, it would answer the purpose as well as if they possessed the science themselves.  Thus I became the hierophant of those three worthy and talented men, who, in spite of their literary accomplishments, were not wise, since they were infatuated with occult and fabulous sciences, and believed in the existence of phenomena impossible in the moral as well as in the physical order of things.  They believed that through me they possessed the philosopher’s stone, the universal panacea, the intercourse with all the elementary, heavenly, and infernal spirits; they had no doubt whatever that, thanks to my sublime science, they could find out the secrets of every government in Europe.

After they had assured themselves of the reality of my cabalistic science by questions respecting the past, they decided to turn it to some use by consulting it upon the present and upon the future.  I had no difficulty in skewing myself a good guesser, because I always gave answers with a double meaning, one of the meanings being carefully arranged by me, so as not to be understood until after the event; in that manner, my cabalistic science, like the oracle of Delphi, could never be found in fault.  I saw how easy it must have been for the ancient heathen priests to impose upon ignorant, and therefore credulous mankind.  I saw how easy it will always be for impostors to find dupes, and I realized, even better than the Roman orator, why two augurs could never look at each other without laughing; it was because they had both an equal interest in giving importance to the deceit they perpetrated, and from which they derived such immense profits.  But what I could not, and probably never shall, understand, was the reason for which the Fathers, who were not so simple or so ignorant as our Evangelists, did not feel able to deny the divinity of oracles, and, in order to get out of the difficulty, ascribed them to the devil.  They never would have entertained such a strange idea if they had been acquainted with cabalistic science.  My three worthy friends were like the holy Fathers; they had intelligence and wit, but they were superstitious, and no philosophers.  But, although believing fully in my oracles, they were too kind-hearted to think them the work of the devil, and it suited their natural goodness better to believe my answers inspired by some heavenly spirit.  They were not only good Christians and faithful to the Church, but even real devotees and full of scruples.  They were not married, and, after having renounced all commerce with women, they had become the enemies of the female sex; perhaps a strong proof of the weakness of their minds.  They imagined that chastity was the condition ‘sine qua non’ exacted by the spirits from those who wished to have intimate communication or intercourse with them:  they fancied that spirits excluded women, and ‘vice versa’.