Asia, indeed, through all time, has been the home of the heroes of occult science.  Persons of this kind, recovering their normal state, are usually just as they were before.  They fulfil, in some sort, the chemical and physical functions of bodies which conduct electricity; at times inert metal, at other times a channel filled with a mysterious current.  In their normal condition they are given to practices which bring them before the magistrate, yea, verily, like the notorious Balthazar, even unto the criminal court, and so to the hulks.  You could hardly find a better proof of the immense influence of fortune-telling upon the working classes than the fact that poor Pons’ life and death hung upon the prediction that Mme. Fontaine was to make from the cards.

Although a certain amount of repetition is inevitable in a canvas so considerable and so full of detail as a complete picture of French society in the nineteenth century, it is needless to repeat the description of Mme. Fontaine’s den, already given in Les Comediens sans le savoir; suffice it to say that Mme. Cibot used to go to Mme. Fontaine’s house in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple as regularly as frequenters of the Cafe Anglais drop in at that restaurant for lunch.  Mme. Cibot, being a very old customer, often introduced young persons and old gossips consumed with curiosity to the wise woman.

The old servant who acted as provost marshal flung open the door of the sanctuary with no further ceremony than the remark, “It’s Mme. Cibot.—­Come in, there’s nobody here.”

“Well, child, what can bring you here so early of a morning?” asked the sorceress, as Mme. Fontaine might well be called, for she was seventy-eight years old, and looked like one of the Parcae.

“Something has given me a turn,” said La Cibot; “I want the grand jeu; it is a question of my fortune.”  Therewith she explained her position, and wished to know if her sordid hopes were likely to be realized.

“Do you know what the grand jeu means?” asked Mme. Fontaine, with much solemnity.

“No, I haven’t never seen the trick, I am not rich enough.—­A hundred francs!  It’s not as if it cost so much!  Where was the money to come from?  But now I can’t help myself, I must have it.”

“I don’t do it often, child,” returned Mme. Fontaine; “I only do it for rich people on great occasions, and they pay me twenty-five louis for doing it; it tires me, you see, it wears me out.  The ‘Spirit’ rives my inside, here.  It is like going to the ‘Sabbath,’ as they used to say.”

“But when I tell you that it means my whole future, my dear good Ma’am Fontaine—­”

“Well, as it is you that have come to consult me so often, I will submit myself to the Spirit!” replied Mme. Fontaine, with a look of genuine terror on her face.

She rose from her filthy old chair by the fireside, and went to a table covered with a green cloth so worn that you could count the threads.  A huge toad sat dozing there beside a cage inhabited by a black disheveled-looking fowl.