sm would not carry me so far as that, I confess. But must you
go so soon?"

"Yes, I have a pressing engagement."

"What a queer age," said Durtal, conducting him to the door. "It is just
at the moment when positivism is at its zenith that mysticism rises
again and the follies of the occult begin."

"Oh, but it's always been that way. The tail ends of all centuries are
alike. They're always periods of vacillation and uncertainty. When
materialism is rotten-ripe magic takes root. This phenomenon reappears
every hundred years. Not to go further back, look at the decline of the
last century. Alongside of the rationalists and atheists you find
Saint-Germain, Cagliostro, Saint-Martin, Gabalis, Cazotte, the
Rosicrucian societies, the infernal circles, as now. With that, good-bye
and good luck."

"Yes," said Durtal, closing the door, "but Cagliostro and his ilk had a
certain audacity, and perhaps a little knowledge, while the mages of our
time--what inept fakes!"

CHAPTER XIX

In a fiacre they went up the rue de Vaugirard. Mme. Chantelouve was as
in a shell and spoke not a word. Durtal looked closely at her when, as
they passed a street lamp, a shaft of light played over her veil a
moment, then winked out. She seemed agitated and nervous beneath her
reserve. He took her hand. She did not withdraw it. He could feel the
chill of it through her glove, and her blonde hair tonight seemed
disordered, dry, and not so fine as usual.

"Nearly there?"

But in a low voice full of anguish she said, "Do not speak."

Bored by this taciturn, almost hostile tete-a-tete, he began to examine
the route through the windows of the cab. The street stretched out
interminable, already deserted, so badly paved that at every step the
cab springs creaked. The lamp-posts were beginning to be further and
further apart. The cab was approaching the ramparts.

"Singular itinerary," he murmured, troubled by the woman's cold,
inscrutable reserve.

Abruptly the vehicle turned up a dark street, swung around, and stopped.

Hyacinthe got out. Waiting for the cabman to give him his change, Durtal
inspected the lay of the land. They were in a sort of blind alley. Low
houses, in which there was not a sign of life, bordered a lane that had
no sidewalk. The pavement was like billows. Turning around, when the cab
drove away, he found himself confronted by a long high wall above which
dry leaves rustled in the shadows. A little door with a square gr