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Page 23
And all three were presently rolling in the direction of the Marais.
"What are you taking me to see now?" asked Gazonal.
"The proof of what Bixiou told you," replied Leon; "we shall show you
a woman who makes twenty thousand francs a year by working a fantastic
idea."
"A fortune-teller," said Bixiou, interpreting the look of the
Southerner as a question. "Madame Fontaine is thought, by those who
seek to pry into the future, to be wiser in her wisdom than
Mademoiselle Lenormand."
"She must be very rich," remarked Gazonal.
"She was the victim of her own idea, as long as lotteries existed,"
said Bixiou; "for in Paris there are no great gains without
corresponding outlays. The strongest heads are liable to crack there,
as if to give vent to their steam. Those who make much money have
vices or fancies,--no doubt to establish an equilibrium."
"And now that the lottery is abolished?" asked Gazonal.
"Oh! now she has a nephew for whom she is hoarding."
When they reached the Vieille rue du Temple the three friends entered
one of the oldest houses in that street and passed up a shaking
staircase, the steps of which, caked with mud, led them in semi-
darkness, and through a stench peculiar to houses on an alley, to the
third story, where they beheld a door which painting alone could
render; literature would have to spend too many nights in suitably
describing it.
An old woman, in keeping with that door, and who might have been that
door in human guise, ushered the three friends into a room which
served as an ante-chamber, where, in spite of the warm atmosphere
which fills the streets of Paris, they felt the icy chill of crypts
about them. A damp air came from an inner courtyard which resembled a
huge air-shaft; the light that entered was gray, and the sill of the
window was filled with pots of sickly plants. In this room, which had
a coating of some greasy, fuliginous substance, the furniture, the
chairs, the table, were all most abject. The floor tiles oozed like a
water-cooler. In short, every accessory was in keeping with the
fearful old woman of the hooked nose, ghastly face, and decent rags
who directed the "consulters" to sit down, informing them that only
one at a time could be admitted to Madame.
Gazonal, who played the intrepid, entered bravely, and found himself
in presence of one of those women forgotten by Death, who no doubt
forgets them intentionally in order to leave some samples of Itself
among the living. He saw before him a withered face in which shone
fixed gray eyes of wearying immobility; a flattened nose, smeared with
snuff; knuckle-bones well set up by muscles that, under pretence of
being hands, played nonchalantly with a pack of cards, like some
machine the movement of which is about to run down. The body, a
species of broom-handle decently covered with clothes, enjoyed the
advantages of death and did not stir. Above the forehead rose a coif
of black velvet. Madame Fontaine, for it was really a woman, had a
black hen on her right hand and a huge toad, named Astaroth, on her
left. Gazonal did not at first perceive them.
The toad, of surprising dimensions, was less alarming in himself than
through the effect of two topaz eyes, large as a ten-sous piece, which
cast forth vivid gleams. It was impossible to endure that look. The
toad is a creature as yet unexplained. Perhaps the whole animal
creation, including man, is comprised in it; for, as Lassailly said,
the toad exists indefinitely; and, as we know, it is of all created
animals the one whose marriage lasts the longest.
The black hen had a cage about two feet distant from the table,
covered with a green cloth, to which she came along a plank which
formed a sort of drawbridge between the cage and the table.
When the woman, the least real of the creatures in this Hoffmanesque
den, said to Gazonal: "Cut!" the worthy provincial shuddered
involuntarily. That which renders these beings so formidable is the
importance of what we want to know. People go to them, as they know
very well, to buy hope.
The den of the sibyl was much darker than the antechamber; the color
of the walls could scarcely be distinguished. The ceiling, blackened
by smoke, far from reflecting the little light that came from a window
obstructed by pale and sickly vegetations, absorbed the greater part
of it; but the table where the sorceress sat received what there was
of this half-light fully. The table, the chair of the woman, and that
on which Gazonal was seated, formed the entire furniture of the little
room, which was divided at one end by a sort of loft where Madame
Fontaine probably slept. Gazonal heard through a half-opened door the
bubbling murmur of a soup-pot. That kitchen sound, accompanied by a
composite odor in which the effluvia of a sink predominated, mingled
incongruous ideas of the necessities of actual life with those of
supernatural power. Disgust entered into curiosity.
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