“Astaroth! here, my son!” she said, and the creature looked up intelligently at her as she rapped him on the back with a long knitting-needle.—­“And you, Mademoiselle Cleopatre!—­attention!” she continued, tapping the ancient fowl on the beak.

Then Mme. Fontaine began to think; for several seconds she did not move; she looked like a corpse, her eyes rolled in their sockets and grew white; then she rose stiff and erect, and a cavernous voice cried: 

“Here I am!”

Automatically she scattered millet for Cleopatre, took up the pack of cards, shuffled them convulsively, and held them out to Mme. Cibot to cut, sighing heavily all the time.  At the sight of that image of Death in the filthy turban and uncanny-looking bed-jacket, watching the black fowl as it pecked at the millet-grains, calling to the toad Astaroth to walk over the cards that lay out on the table, a cold thrill ran through Mme. Cibot; she shuddered.  Nothing but strong belief can give strong emotions.  An assured income, to be or not to be, that was the question.

The sorceress opened a magical work and muttered some unintelligible words in a sepulchral voice, looked at the remaining millet-seeds, and watched the way in which the toad retired.  Then after seven or eight minutes, she turned her white eyes on the cards and expounded them.

“You will succeed, although nothing in the affair will fall out as you expect.  You will have many steps to take, but you will reap the fruits of your labors.  You will behave very badly; it will be with you as it is with all those who sit by a sick-bed and covet part of the inheritance.  Great people will help you in this work of wrongdoing.  Afterwards in the death agony you will repent.  Two escaped convicts, a short man with red hair and an old man with a bald head, will murder you for the sake of the money you will be supposed to have in the village whither you will retire with your second husband.  Now, my daughter, it is still open to you to choose your course.”

The excitement which seemed to glow within, lighting up the bony hollows about the eyes, was suddenly extinguished.  As soon as the horoscope was pronounced, Mme. Fontaine’s face wore a dazed expression; she looked exactly like a sleep-walker aroused from sleep, gazed about her with an astonished air, recognized Mme. Cibot, and seemed surprised by her terrified face.

“Well, child,” she said, in a totally different voice, “are you satisfied?”

Mme. Cibot stared stupidly at the sorceress, and could not answer.

“Ah! you would have the grand jeu; I have treated you as an old acquaintance.  I only want a hundred francs—­”

“Cibot,—­going to die?” gasped the portress.

“So I have been telling you very dreadful things, have I?” asked Mme. Fontaine, with an extremely ingenuous air.

“Why, yes!” said La Cibot, taking a hundred francs from her pocket and laying them down on the edge of the table.  “Going to be murdered, think of it—­”