"De la Nox," insisted Adolphe.
"De la Nose, my dear M. de la Nose, I'll be hanged if I ever expected that I should one day find his skeleton in a house in Huchette Street!"
The Mage, motionless and silent, regarded Theophrastus and his talk with an attention nothing could divert.
"I have never laughed anywhere so much as at Saint-Chaumont Hill, between Chopinettes mill and Cock mill," said Theophrastus with the same garrulous cheerfulness. "Chopinettes tavern was there; it had taken the place of the tavern François Villon was so fond of, where for centuries all the cullies and doxies of Paris used to come on hanging-days to carouse. It was between Chopinettes mill, Cock mill and the Gallows of Montfaucon that I buried my treasures; and if you have a plan of old Paris, my dear M. Elephant de Taillepot de St. Elmo's Fire de la Nose—"
Theophrastus had not quite come to the end of his host's name, when, of a sudden, the darkness fled; and the room and all in it shone clear in the brilliant light of day.
He looked round him with manifest satisfaction, at his wife, who was muttering a prayer, at his friend Adolphe, who was on the verge of tears, at the bookshelves, which practically walled the room, and at M. Eliphas de la Nox, who smiled at him with gentle compassion. The Mage had lost his supernatural air; his cloak of astral light had gone; and if his features had still their sublime and ineffable pallor, he none the less looked a man like anybody else.
"I like this a good deal better," said Theophrastus with a deep sigh of relief.
The Mage raised his hand. "No: I will not give you a map of old Paris to look at, though I have them of every age," he said. "You have nothing to do with old Paris. You are Theophrastus Longuet; and we are in the year 1911."
"That's all very well. But it's a question of my treasure, treasures which belong to me," said Theophrastus stubbornly. "And I have every right to look in a map of old Paris at the place where I formerly buried my treasures, in order that I may see on a map of new Paris where I shall have to hunt again. It's clear—"
The Mage interrupted him, saying to M. Lecamus, "I have often seen here crises of Karma; but it has never been my privilege to study one of such force."