ix returned, blowing out his lantern. "The bell was in good voice,
this clear, dry night," and he took off his mountaineer cap and his
overcoat.

"What do you think of him?" Des Hermies asked Durtal in a very low
voice, and pointed at the astrologer, now lost in a cloud of pipe smoke.

"In repose he looks like an old owl, and when he speaks he makes me
think of a melancholy and discursive schoolmaster."

"Only one," said Des Hermies to Carhaix, who was holding a lump of sugar
over Des Hermies's coffee cup.

"I hear, monsieur, that you are occupied with a history of Gilles de
Rais," said Gevingey to Durtal.

"Yes, for the time being I am up to my eyes in Satanism with that man."

"And," said Des Hermies, "we were just going to appeal to your extensive
knowledge. You only can enlighten my friend on one of the most obscure
questions of Diabolism."

"Which one?"

"That of incubacy and succubacy."

Gevingey did not answer at once. "That is a much graver question than
Spiritism," he said at last, "and grave in a different way. But monsieur
already knows something about it?"

"Only that opinions differ. Del Rio and Bodin, for instance, consider
the incubi as masculine demons which couple with women and the succubi
as demons who consummate the carnal act with men.

"According to their theories the incubi take the semen lost by men in
dream and make use of it. So that two questions arise: first, can a
child be born of such a union? The possibility of this kind of
procreation has been upheld by the Church doctors, who affirm, even,
that children of such commerce are heavier than others and can drain
three nurses without taking on flesh. The second question is whether the
demon who copulates with the mother or the man whose semen has been
taken is the father of the child. To which Saint Thomas answers, with
more or less subtle arguments, that the real father is not the incubus
but the man."

"For Sinistrari d'Ameno," observed Durtal, "the incubi and succubi are
not precisely demons, but animal spirits, intermediate between the demon
and the angel, a sort of satyr or faun, such as were revered in the time
of paganism, a sort of imp, such as were exorcised in the Middle Ages.
Sinistrari adds that they do not need to pollute a sleeping man, since
they possess genitals and are endowed with prolificacy."

"Well, there is nothing further," said Gevingey. "Goerres, so learned, so
precise, in his _Mystik_ passes rapidly ov