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Updated: June 27, 2025
I shall never again dare to stand before M. d'Asterac, who believes me to have passed the night in the silent voluptuousness of magic, which perhaps would have been better for me. Alas! I'll never more see Mosaide's niece, Mademoiselle Jahel, who at night-time woke me in my room in such a charming way. No doubt she will forget me.
"Would you kindly give me news of Zosimus the Panopolitan?" inquired M. d'Asterac. "He goes on," replied my master; "goes on nicely, though slowly at the moment." "Do not forget, abbe," said the cabalist, "that possession of the greatest secrets is attached to the knowledge of those ancient texts." "I think of it, sir, with solicitude," said the abbe.
M. d'Asterac guessed it and said: "Gentlemen, this is only an attempt, and may seem to you an unfortunate one. I shall not persist in it. I'll have some more customary dishes served for you and I shall not disdain to partake of them. If the dishes I offer you to-day are badly prepared, it is less the fault of my cook than that of chemistry, which is still in its infancy.
I confess I am rather uneasy about it." "My son," replied M. d'Asterac, "your curiosity pleases me and I will satisfy it. The Salamanders have no teeth that we should call such. But their gums are furnished with two ranges of pearls, very white and very brilliant, lending to their smiles an inconceivable gracefulness. You should know that these pearls are light-hardened."
Now, it was his soul, his sparkling and sweet soul, which I fancied reduced to ashes together with the queen of libraries. The wind strengthened the fire and the flames roared like voracious beasts. Questioning a man of Neuilly still blacker than myself, and wearing only his vest, I asked him if M. d'Asterac and his people had been saved.
As soon as M. d'Asterac was gone, my tutor sat down over the papyrus of Zosimus and, with the help of a magnifying glass commenced to decipher it. I asked him if he was not surprised by what he had just heard. Without raising his head he replied: "My dear boy, I have known too many kinds of persons and traversed fortunes too various to be surprised at anything.
Do not fail, Tournebroche, to be at nightfall at the Bergeres Circus." I promised to be there; it was my intention to lock myself in my room for the purpose of writing to M. d'Asterac, and my dear parents, asking them to kindly excuse me for not taking personal leave of them, as I had to fly after an adventure wherein I was more unlucky than guilty.
M. d'Asterac replied that one could escape it by means of intuitive divination, and in no other way. "Besides," he added, "this pathway is fatal." It went on in a direct line to a brick pavilion, hidden under ivy, which no doubt had served in time gone by as a guard house. There the park came to an end close to the monotonous marshes of the Seine.
In this dress I consider myself to be a very honest man. This M. d'Asterac seems to be tolerably magnificent. It's a pity he's mad. Wise he is in one way, as he calls his valet Criton, which means judge. And it's very true that our valets are the witnesses of all our actions.
"The Abbe Coignard," said M. d'Asterac, "is an admirable translator of Greek. But you must not want anything from him beyond his books. He has no philosophy. As far as you are in question, my son, you reason with the infirmity of ignorance, and the weakness of your arguments afflicts me. You say, those unions are against nature. What do you know about it?
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