Part 24

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.

“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--”

“Ah! there it is! You would have the grand jeu; but don’t take on so, all the folk that are murdered on the cards don’t die.”

“But is it possible, Ma’am Fontaine?”

“Oh, I know nothing about it, my pretty dear! You would rap at the door of the future; I pull the cord, and it came.”

“It, what?” asked Mme. Cibot.

“Well, then, the Spirit!” cried the sorceress impatiently.

“Good-bye, Ma’am Fontaine,” exclaimed the portress. “I did not know what the grand jeu was like. You have given me a good fright, that you have.”

“The mistress will not put herself in that state twice in a month,” said the servant, as she went with La Cibot to the landing. “She would do herself to death if she did, it tires her so. She will eat cutlets now and sleep for three hours afterwards.”

Out in the street La Cibot took counsel of herself as she went along, and, after the manner of all who ask for advice of any sort or description, she took the favorable part of the prediction and rejected the rest. The next day found her confirmed in her resolutions--she would set all in train to become rich by securing a part of Pons’ collection. Nor for some time had she any other thought than the combination of various plans to this end. The faculty of self-concentration seen in rough, uneducated persons, explained on a previous page, the reserve power accumulated in those whose mental energies are unworn by the daily wear and tear of social life, and brought into action so soon as that terrible weapon the “fixed idea” is brought into play,--all this was pre-eminently manifested in La Cibot. Even as the “fixed idea” works miracles of evasion, and brings forth prodigies of sentiment, so greed transformed the portress till she became as formidable as a Nucingen at bay, as subtle beneath her seeming stupidity as the irresistible La Palferine.

About seven o’clock one morning, a few days afterwards, she saw Remonencq taking down his shutters. She went across to him.

“How could one find out how much the things yonder in my gentlemen’s rooms are worth?” she asked in a wheedling tone.

“Oh! that is quite easy,” replied the owner of the old curiosity shop. “If you will play fair and above board with me, I will tell you of somebody, a very honest man, who will know the value of the pictures to a farthing--”

“Who?”

“M. Magus, a Jew. He only does business to amuse himself now.”

Elie Magus has appeared so often in the Comedie Humaine, that it is needless to say more of him here. Suffice it to add that he had retired from business, and as a dealer was following the example set by Pons the amateur. Well-known valuers like Henry, Messrs. Pigeot and Moret, Theret, Georges, and Roehn, the experts of the Musee, in fact, were but children compared with Elie Magus. He could see a masterpiece beneath the accumulated grime of a century; he knew all schools, and the handwriting of all painters.