“Then Mlle. Celie, dressed in a long gown of black velvet, which set off her white arms and shoulders well—­oh, mademoiselle did not forget those little trifles,” Helene Vauquier interrupted her story, with a return of her bitterness, to interpolate—­ “mademoiselle would sail into the room with her velvet train flowing behind her, and perhaps for a little while she would say there was a force working against her, and she would sit silent in a chair while madame gaped at her with open eyes.  At last mademoiselle would say that the powers were favourable and the spirits would manifest themselves to night.  Then she would be placed in a cabinet, perhaps with a string tied across the door outside—­you will understand it was my business to see after the string—­and the lights would be turned down, or perhaps out altogether.  Or at other times we would sit holding hands round a table, Mlle. Celie between Mme. Dauvray and myself.  But in that case the lights would be turned out first, and it would be really my hand which held Mme. Dauvray’s.  And whether it was the cabinet or the chairs, in a moment mademoiselle would be creeping silently about the room in a little pair of soft-soled slippers without heels, which she wore so that she might not be heard, and tambourines would rattle as you say, and fingers touch the forehead and the neck, and strange voices would sound from corners of the room, and dim apparitions would appear—­the spirits of great ladies of the past, who would talk with Mme. Dauvray.  Such ladies as Mme. de Castiglione, Marie Antoinette, Mme. de Medici—­I do not remember all the names, and very likely I do not pronounce them properly.  Then the voices would cease and the lights be turned up, and Mlle. Celie would be found in a trance just in the same place and attitude as she had been when the lights were turned out.  Imagine, messieurs, the effect of such seances upon a woman like Mme. Dauvray.  She was made for them.  She believed in them implicitly.  The words of the great ladies from the past—­she would remember and repeat them, and be very proud that such great ladies had come back to the world merely to tell her—­Mme. Dauvray—­about their lives.  She would have had seances all day, but Mlle. Celie pleaded that she was left exhausted at the end of them.  But Mlle. Celie was of an address!  For instance—­it will seem very absurd and ridiculous to you, gentlemen, but you must remember what Mme. Dauvray was—­for instance, madame was particularly anxious to speak with the spirit of Mme. de Montespan.  Yes, yes!  She had read all the memoirs about that lady.  Very likely Mlle. Celie had put the notion into Mme. Dauvray’s head, for madame was not a scholar.  But she was dying to hear that famous woman’s voice and to catch a dim glimpse of her face.  Well, she was never gratified.  Always she hoped.  Always Mlle. Celie tantalised