“But I warn you, you’ll be at some disadvantage, sir, to compete with Mosaïde in the knowledge of human antiquities. He has rediscovered monuments which were believed to have been lost; among others, the column of Seth and the oracles of Sambéthé the daughter of Noah and the most ancient of the sybils.”
“Oh!” exclaimed my tutor as he stamped on the powdery floor so that a cloud of dust whirled up. “Oh! what dreams! It is too much, you make fun of me! And M. Mosaïde cannot have so much foolery in his head, under his large bonnet, resembling the crown of Charlemagne; that column of Seth is a ridiculous invention of that shallow Flavius Josephus, an absurd story by which nobody has been imposed upon before you. And the predictions of Sambéthé, Noah’s daughter, I am really curious to know them; and M. Mosaïde, who seems to be pretty sparing of his words, would oblige by uttering a few by words of mouth, because it is not possible for him, I am quite pleased to recognise it, to pronounce them by the more secret voice in which the ancient sybils habitually gave their mysterious responses.”
Mosaïde, who seemed to hear nothing, said suddenly:
“Noah’s daughter has spoken; Sambéthé has said: ‘The vain man who laughs and mocks will not hear the voice which goes forth from the seventh tabernacle, the infidel walketh miserably to his ruin.’”
After this oracular pronouncement all three of us took leave of Mosaïde.
CHAPTER XII
I take a Walk and visit Mademoiselle Catherine
In that year the summer was radiant, and I had a longing to go walking. One day, strolling under the trees of the Cours-la-Reine with two little crowns I had found that very morning in the pocket of my breeches, and which were the first by which my goldmaker had shown his munificence, I sat down at the door of a small coffee-house, at a table so small that it was quite appropriate to my solitude and modesty. Then I began to think of the oddness of my destiny, while at my side some musketeers were drinking Spanish wine with girls of the town. I was not quite sure that Croix-des-Sablons, M. d’Asterac, Mosaïde, the papyrus of Zosimus and my fine clothes were not dreams, out of which I should wake to find myself clad in the dimity vest, back again turning the spit at the Queen Pédauque.
I came out of my reverie on feeling my sleeve pulled, and saw standing before me Friar Ange, his face nearly hidden by his beard and cowl.