lum, just as you set your
teeth in it, oh! something blow it out of your mouth, I know not
what, the speerits will not say, perhaps because they do not know,
for they have not prescience of all things. But of this be sure,
my Godfrey, when that happen, that it is your own fault, for had
you trusted to your godmamma Riennes it never would have chanced,
since she would have shown you how to get your plum and eat it to
the stone and then throw away the stone and get other plums and be
happy--happy and full instead of empty. Well, so it is, and as I
must I tell you. There is but one hope for you, unless you would
go sorrowful. To come back to your godmamma, who will teach you
how to walk and be happy--happy and get all you want. Also, since
she is now poor, you would do well to send her a little money to
this address in Italy, since that old humbug of a Pasteur, whom
she cannot harm because of the influences round him, still
prevents her from returning to Switzerland, where she has friends.
Now that big plum, it is very nice and you desire it much. Come to
your godmamma and she will show you how to get it off the tree
quickly. Yes, within one year. Or do not come and it will hang
there for many winters and shrivel as plums do, and at last one
bite and it will be gone. And then, my godson, then, my dear
Godfrey--well, perhaps I will tell you the rest another time. You
poor silly boy, who will not understand that the more you get the
more you will always have.

"Your Godmamma, "Who love you still although you treat her so badly,
"The Countess of Riennes.

"(Ah! you did not know I had that title, did you, but in the
speerit world I have others which are much higher.)"

Godfrey thrust this precious epistle back into his pocket with a
feeling of physical and mental sickness. How did this horrible woman
know so much about him and his affairs, and why did she prophesy such
dreadful things? Further, if her knowledge was so accurate, although
veiled in her foreign metaphor, why should not her prophecies be
accurate also? And if they were, why should he be called upon to suffer
so many things?

He could find no answer to these questions, but afterwards he sent her
letter to the Pasteur, who in due course returned it with some upright
and manly comments both upon the epistle itself and the story of his
troubles, which Godfrey had detailed to him. Amongst much else he wrote
i