He kept still, wondering whether she was making fun of him or whether she really was ready to tell him what he wanted to know.
"Listen," she said. "I hold firmly by my decision of the other night. I will not permit you to become acquainted with Canon Docre. But at a settled time I can arrange, without your forming any relations with him, to have you be present at the ceremony you most desire to know about."
"The Black Mass?"
"Yes. Within a week Docre will have left Paris. If once, in my company, you see him, you will never see him afterward. Keep your evenings free all this week. When the time comes I will notify you. But you may thank me, dear, because to be useful to you I am disobeying the commands of my confessor, whom I dare not see now, so I am damning myself."
He kissed her, then, "Seriously, that man is really a monster?"
"I fear so. In any case I would not wish anybody the misfortune of having him for an enemy."
"I should say not, if he poisons people by magic, as he seems to have done Gévingey."
"And he probably has. I should not like to be in the astrologer's shoes."
"You believe in Docre's potency, then. Tell me, how does he operate, with the blood of mice, with broths, or with oil?"
"So you know about that! He does employ these substances. In fact, he is one of the very few persons who know how to manage them without poisoning themselves. It's as dangerous as working with explosives. Frequently, though, when attacking defenceless persons, he uses simpler recipes. He distils extracts of poison and adds sulphuric acid to fester the wound, then he dips in this compound the point of a lancet with which he has his victim pricked by a flying spirit or a larva. It is ordinary, well-known magic, that of Rosicrucians and tyros."