He smiled again.
"My name is Aristide," he said, and seemed to be waiting for a sensation. The ladies looked at one another puzzled. Only Mme de Breteuil frowned a moment, and then clapped her hands.
"I have it—ah, Monsieur Aristide, it is so many years ago. I think we won't say how many, but all Paris talked about you then. They called you the Sorcerer, and one's priest scolded one soundly if one so much as mentioned your name."
"Yes," said the old man with a nod.
"Well, you have forgotten it, I daresay, but I came to see you then, I and my sister-in-law, Jeanne de Breteuil. In those days the future interested me enormously, but when I got into the room, and thought that perhaps I should see the devil, I was scared to death; and as to Jeanne, she pinched me black and blue. There was a pool of ink, and a child who saw pictures in it."
"Oh, but how delightful," exclaimed Julie de Labédoyère.
"Not at all, my dear, it was most alarming."
"But what did he tell you?"
The old lady bridled a little.
"Oh, a number of things that would interest nobody now, though at the time they were extremely absorbing. But one thing you told me, Monsieur, and that was that I should die in a foreign land, and I assure you I find it a vastly consoling prophecy at present."