other, it will be a proof."

At dinner the same evening everything is confirmed, the handwriting and signatures are identical. A little surprised, the artist submits to our examination; at last he asks: "What is your object in this?"

"Do you know Francis Schlatter?"

"I have never heard the name."

"Don't you remember that doctor in America last year."

"Oh, yes! that quack!"

He remembers, and I show him the portrait and facsimile.

He laughs sceptically, and remains quite calm and indifferent. That is all.

Some days later I am sitting with my mysterious friend, with our glasses of absinthe, on the terrace of the Café de Versailles, when a fellow in workman's clothes, with a malicious aspect, suddenly stops before the café, then rushes through the customers, and bawls at my friend in his loudest voice: "At last I have you, you sharper, who fleeced me! What is the meaning of it? First of all, you order a cross for thirty francs, and then you disappear. Son of a dog! Do you think a cross like that makes itself?"

He continued to rage. The café waiters vainly attempted to remove him; he threatened to fetch the police, while the unfortunate accused, motionless, dumb, and prostrate, like a condemned man, remained exposed to the gaze of a circle of artists who all knew him more or less. When the commotion was over, I asked him with a bewildered mind, as if I had witnessed a witches' sabbath: "What cross worth thirty francs? I don't understand a word of the business?"

"It was a model of Joan of Arc's cross which I was going to use for my picture of the crucified woman."

"He certainly was a devil, that workman."

After a pause, I continue: "It is odd, but one does not play unpunished either with the Cross or with Joan of Arc."

"You believe in them?"

"I don't know!—But the thirty pieces of silver!"

"Enough! Enough!" he exclaims in a tone of vexation.

From this evening a certain coldness ensues between us. Our acquaintance had now lasted four terrible months. My companion had studied in quite a new school, and had time to strike out new paths in his art, so that he could finally throw aside "the crucified woman" as an old toy. He had learned to regard suffering as the only real joy in life, and so had attained to resignation. He was a hero in his poverty. I admired him when twice in the same day he measured on foot the distance between Montrouge and the Market Halls with boots worn down at the heel, and without food. In the evening, when he had visited the offices of seventeen illustrated papers, and sold three drawings, without however being paid for them at once, he quickly swallowed two sous' worth of bread and hurried to the Bal Bullier.

At last, in silent agreement, we dissolved the partnership we had entered on for mutual help. We both felt that it was enough, and that our destinies must go on to separate fulfilments. When we exchanged our last farewells, I knew that they were our last. I have never seen the man again, nor heard what has become of him.

In the course of the spring, while I was feeling depressed by my own and my friend's untoward destiny, I received a letter from the children of my first marriage, informing me that they had been very ill in hospital. When I compared the time of their illness with my mischievous attempt at magic, I was alarmed. I had frivolously played with hidden forces, and now my evil purpose, guided by an unseen Hand, had reached its goal, and struck my heart. I do not excuse myself, and only ask the reader to remember this fact, in case he should ever feel inclined to practise magic, especially those forms of it called wizardry, or more properly witchcraft, and whose reality has been placed beyond all doubt by De Rochas.[1]

One Sunday before Easter I went very early through the Jar din de Luxembourg, crossed the street, and passed under the arcades of the Odeon; I stood still before an edition of Balzac in a blue binding, and by chance picked out his novel Séraphita. Why just that one? Perhaps it is an unconscious recollection of reading a criticism of my book, Sylva Sylvarum, in the periodical Initiation, in which I was called "a countryman of Swedenborg." When I got home I opened the book, which was almost entirely unknown to me, for so many years had passed between my first acquaintance with it and this second reading. It was like a new work to me, and now my mind was prepared for it, I swallowed down the contents of this extraordinary book wholesale. I had never read anything of Swedenborg, for in his own native land and mine he passed for a charlatan, dreamer, and quack. But now I was seized with enthusiastic admiration, as I heard this heavenly giant of the last century speak by the mouth of such a genial French interpreter.

I read now with religious attention, and found on page 16 the 20th of March given as the day on which Swedenborg died. I stopped, considered, and consulted the almanac; it was exactly the 20th of March, and also Palm Sunday. It was then that Swedenborg entered into my life, in which he was to play such a great part as judge and master, and on the anniversary of his death he brought me the palm, whether of the victor or the martyr—who could say?

Séraphita became my gospel, and caused me to enter into such a close connection with the other world, that I felt sick of life, and an irresistible homesickness for heaven seized me. Doubtless, I was being prepared for a higher existence. I despised the earth, the impure earth, its inhabitants and their doings. I felt like a perfectly righteous man, whom the Eternal was testing, and whom the purgatory of this world would soon make fit for deliverance. The courage produced by the consciousness of my confidential relation to the powers was always increased, when I saw my scientific experiments crowned with success. According to my computations and the observations of the metallurgists, I had succeeded in making gold, and I believed I could prove it. I sent my proofs to Rouen to a friendly chemist. He opposed me with counter-arguments, and for eight days I could find no flaw in them. Then turning over by chance the Chemistry of my Master Orfila, I learned the secret of my mistake.

This old, forgotten, and despised chemical treatise of 1830 helped me at the critical moment, and became my oracle. My friends Orfila and Swedenborg protected, encouraged, and chastised me. They did not appear to me in dreams or waking visions, but in small daily occurrences showed me that they did not leave me alone in the vicissitudes of my life. The spirits had become naturalistic like the times, which were no longer content with visions.