I went up to the marchioness and told her that dinner was ready, and that we should dine alone, as I had been obliged to send the abbe away.

“He was an idiot; but how about Querilinthos?”

“After dinner Paralis will tell us all about him.  I have strong suspicions that there is something to be cleared up.”

“So have I. The man seems changed.  Where is he?”

“He is in bed, ill of a disease which I dare not so much as name to you.”

“That is a very extraordinary circumstance; I have never heard of such a thing before.  It must be the work of an evil genius.”

“I have never heard of such a thing, either; but now let us dine.  We shall have to work hard to-day at the consecration of the tin.”

“All the better.  We must offer an expiatory sacrifice to Oromasis, for, awful thought! in three days he would have to regenerate me, and the operation would be performed in that condition.”

“Let us eat now,” I repeated; “I fear lest the hour of Jupiter be over-past.”

“Fear nothing, I will see that all goes well.”

After the consecration of the tin had been performed, I transferred that of Oromasis to another day, while I consulted the oracle assiduously, the marchioness translating the figures into letters.  The oracle declared that seven salamanders had transported the true Querilinthos to the Milky Way, and that the man in the next room was the evil genius, St. Germain, who had been put in that fearful condition by a female gnome, who had intended to make him the executioner of Semiramis, who was to die of the dreadful malady before her term had expired.  The oracle also said that Semiramis should leave to Payaliseus Galtinardus (myself) all the charge of getting rid of the evil genius, St. Germain; and that she was not to doubt concerning her regeneration, since the word would be sent me by the true Querilinthos from the Milky Way on the seventh night of my worship of the moon.  Finally the oracle declared that I was to embrace Semiramis two days before the end of the ceremonies, after an Undine had purified us by bathing us in the room where we were.

I had thus undertaken to regenerate the worthy Semiramis, and I began to think how I could carry out my undertaking without putting myself to shame.  The marchioness was handsome but old, and I feared lest I should be unable to perform the great act.  I was thirty-eight, and I began to feel age stealing on me.  The Undine, whom I was to obtain of the moon, was none other than Marcoline, who was to give me the necessary generative vigour by the sight of her beauty and by the contact of her hands.  The reader will see how I made her come down from heaven.

I received a note from Madame Audibert which made me call on her before paying my visit to Marcoline.  As soon as I came in she told me joyously that my niece’s father had just received a letter from the father of the Genoese, asking the hand of his daughter for his only son, who had been introduced to her by the Chevalier de Seingalt, her uncle, at the Paretti’s.