Durtal burst out laughing. "But, my dear, to hear you, one would think death could be sent to a distance like a letter."
"Well, isn't cholera transmitted by letters? Ask the sanitary corps. Don't they disinfect all mail in the time of epidemics?"
"I don't contradict that, but the case is not the same."
"It is too, because it is the question of transmission, invisibility, distance, which astonishes you."
"What astonishes me more than that is to hear of the Rosicrucians actively satanizing. I confess that I had never considered them as anything more than harmless suckers and funereal fakes."
"But all societies are composed of suckers and the wily leaders who exploit them. That's the case of the Rosicru
cians. Yes, their leaders privately attempt crime. One does not need to be erudite or intelligent to practise the ritual of spells. At any rate, and I affirm this, there is among them a former man of letters whom I know. He lives with a married woman, and they pass the time, he and she, trying to kill the husband by sorcery."
"Well, it has its advantages over divorce, that system has."
She pouted. "I shan't say another word. I think you are making fun of me. You don't believe in anything—"
"Indeed. I was not laughing at you. I haven't very precise ideas on this subject. I admit that at first blush all this seems improbable, to say the least. But when I think that all the efforts of modern science do but confirm the discoveries of the magic of other days, I keep my mouth shut. It is true," he went on after a silence,—"to cite only one fact—that people can no longer laugh at the stories of women being changed into cats in the Middle Ages. Recently there was brought to M. Charcot a little girl who suddenly got down on her hands and knees and ran and jumped around, scratching and spitting and arching her back. So that metamorphosis is possible. No, one cannot too often repeat it, the truth is that we know nothing and have no right to deny anything. But to return to your Rosicrucians. Using purely chemical formulæ, they get along without sacrilege?"