t his error.

"_Il ne manquerait que ca!_" he snapped at length, and as he had no
other suit of clothes, he went resignedly to bed and discoursed there
most learnedly. He was seventy-five then and his great treatise was
but one-third done: the _concierge_ told me long after his death that
his last living act was to burn it, with the tears streaming down his
old face, poor old fellow! And yet he was one of the happiest people I
have ever known. The _concierge_ was terribly afraid of him, because
he had once in his dry, detached way presented that official with a
complete chart of his life, temperament and just deserts, neatly done
in coloured inks and mounted on cardboard. It was so devilishly
accurate that the _concierge_ trembled whenever he passed it, which
was frequently, as his wife had it framed and hung it in their
bedroom.

To old Papa Morel, then, I propounded the problem of accounting for
Margarita's birth-month having been Roger's, and even within the same
week. Pressed for the year of her birth, I made her twenty-two, at
which the old man scowled and muttered and traced with his cracked
yellow nail devious courses through his great map of the heavens. To
tease him I enumerated a few of her qualities and habits, all to be
thoroughly accounted for in my estimation, by her strange environment
and bringing up; but far from exasperating him further, as I had
supposed it would, this recital appeared to please him mightily.
Shaking his finger reprovingly, he advised me no longer to mock myself
of him, for unknown to myself I had exposed my own deceit: was I so
utterly unversed in the heavenly politics as not to know that this
person described herself fully as having been born four years previous
to the date I had given him, in the year of the eclipse, which was
moreover a comet-year and one in which Uranus usurped the throne of
reigning planets, and breaking all bounds, shadowed that fateful
season? That Aquarius, drawn by him, had imposed himself, too, and
affected the very Moon in her courses? Indeed she would be an
unbelievable person, that one! But assuredly she was born in the year
186--. And when we finally found the year of Margarita's birth, it was
precisely the year stated by Papa Morel! He told me, moreover, that
she would be a great artist, at which I laughed, for her future life
was fairly well mapped out for her, I fancied, knowing Roger as I did.
He told me that she would be in grave danger of death