you might court me
a little, because up to now I have done it all. No? That idea does not
amuse him. Let us try something else. Shall we play hide-and-seek with
the cat? He shrugs his shoulders. Well, since there is nothing to change
your grouchy expression, let us talk. What has become of your friend Des
Hermies?"

"Nothing in particular."

"And his experiments with Mattei medicine?"

"I don't know whether he continues to prosecute them or not."

"Well, I see that the conversational possibilities of that topic are
exhausted. You know your replies are not very encouraging, dear."

"But," he said, "everybody sometimes gets so he doesn't answer questions
at great length. I even know a young woman who becomes excessively
laconic when interrogated on a certain subject."

"Of a canon, for instance."

"Precisely."

She crossed her legs, very coolly. "That young woman undoubtedly had
reasons for keeping still. But perhaps that young woman is really eager
to oblige the person who cross-examines her; perhaps, since she last saw
him, she has gone to a great deal of trouble to satisfy his curiosity."

"Look here, Hyacinthe darling, explain yourself," he said, squeezing her
hands, an expression of joy on his face.

"If I have made your mouth water so as not to have a grouchy face in
front of my eyes, I have succeeded remarkably."

He kept still, wondering whether she was making fun of him or whether
she really was ready to tell him what he wanted to know.

"Listen," she said. "I hold firmly by my decision of the other night. I
will not permit you to become acquainted with Canon Docre. But at a
settled time I can arrange, without your forming any relations with him,
to have you be present at the ceremony you most desire to know about."

"The Black Mass?"

"Yes. Within a week Docre will have left Paris. If once, in my company,
you see him, you will never see him afterward. Keep your evenings free
all this week. When the time comes I will notify you. But you may thank
me, dear, because to be useful to you I am disobeying the commands of my
confessor, whom I dare not see now, so I am damning myself."

He kissed her, then, "Seriously, that man is really a monster?"

"I fear so. In any case I would not wish anybody the misfortune of
having him for an enemy."

"I should say not, if he poisons people by magic, as he seems to have
done Gevingey."

"And he probably has. I should not like to be in the astrologer's
shoes