all!'

"'Madame,' I began to say, awed out of the feeling at least of equality
which I should have felt to be proper under such circumstances, and only
aware that Adolph, and possibly myself, had incurred the enmity of a
being so near to the supernatural as to be at least dangerous--'Madame,
I hope that you will not think--'

"But here she cut _me_ short, as she had done Von Berg the instant
before.

"'Hope nothing, young man!' she said, her voice perceptibly less harsh
and brusque than it had been when speaking to my companion. 'Hope
nothing and ask nothing until you may have occasion; then come to me.'

"'And then?'

"'Then I will answer every question you may think proper to put to me.
Stay! you may have occasion to visit me sooner than you suppose, or I
may have occasion to force knowledge upon you that you will not have the
boldness to seek. If so, I shall send for you. Now go, both of you!'

"The dark curtain suddenly fell, and the singular vision faded with the
reflected light which had filled the room. The moment after, I heard the
shuffling feet of the slattern girl coming to show us out of the room,
but, singularly enough, as you will think, not out of the _house_!
Without a word we followed her--Adolph, who knew the customs of the
place, merely slipping a twenty-franc piece into her hand; and in a
moment more we were out in the street and walking up the Rue Saint
Denis. It is not worth while to detail the conversation which followed
between us as we passed up to the Rue Marie Stuart, I to my lodgings and
Adolph to his own, further on, close to the Rue Vivienne and not far
from the Boulevard Montmartre. Of course I asked him fifty questions,
the replies to which left me quite as much in the dark as before. He
knew, he said, and hundreds of other persons in Paris knew, the
singularity of the personal appearance of the sorceress, and her
apparent power of divination, but neither he nor they had any knowledge
of her origin. He had been introduced at her house several months
before, and had asked questions affecting his family in Prussia and the
chances of descent of certain property, the replies to which had
astounded him. He had heard of her using marvellous and fearful
incantations, but had never himself witnessed any thing of them. In two
or three instances, before the present, he had taken friends to the
house and introduced them under any name which he chose to apply to them
for the time, and the sor