Taking the Individual’s hand in hers, a proceeding which made him feel as if he had put his fingers into a bladder of Maccoboy, she made the following prediction: “You will be the father of five children, two of them will be boys, who will be a great comfort to you when you grow old.”
She spoke no good of the girls, and the customer foresaw feminine trouble in his household with those same young ladies. Having a few moments to himself before she resumed, he worked himself into a great passion with the ungrateful hussies who were about to treat their kind old father in so scandalous a manner; but presently recollecting that they were as yet in the condition of “your sister, Betsey Trotwood, who never was born,” he felt that he was slightly premature in his wrath, so he cooled down and resolved to make the best of it with his comfortable boys.
The yellow sorceress continued: “Your line of life is long, and you will live to a good old age. You have had much trouble in love affairs, and now your first love is entirely lost to you. You can never reclaim her, and you must never venture anything in lotteries.”
Whether Madame Fleury supposed that her visitor intended to spend his salary in lottery tickets, in the hope of winning back his early love, or whether she supposed that the woman then exhibiting herself as “Perham’s Gift Lady,” was the person, is not in evidence; but, from the peculiar construction of her last remark, something of the kind must have been in her thoughts. She had now reached the third part of her discourse, and come to the “three questions.” She produced an old French Bible, dingy with age and snuff, and which she informed the observer had been in her family for three hundred years; an old iron key was tied between the leaves, with the ring and part of the shank of the key projecting, and the Bible was tightly bound round with many folds of black ribbon. Making her visitor hold one side of the ring of the key, while she held the other, she said: “Ask your three questions, and if they are to be answered in the affirmative the book will turn.”
The Individual, who had been much impressed by her canine observation of a few minutes before, and whose thoughts were still running upon his pet Juno, and her six innocent offspring, in a fit of absence of mind propounded this interrogatory:
“Shall I marry the person of whom I am now thinking?” The potent enchantress repeated the question aloud in French, and then, with pale lips and trembling voice, she addressed the book and key thus:
“Holy Bible, I ask you, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, will this man marry the person now in his mind?”—then she closed her eyes for a moment, placed one hand over her heart, and rapidly muttered something in so low a tone that it was inaudible to her listener. Immediately the Bible commenced to turn slowly towards her, and soon had made a complete revolution, thus expressing a very decided affirmative.
Having started a matrimonial subject with so satisfactory a result, her customer thought he could do no better than to follow it up, and accordingly asked question No. 2:
“If I marry this person, will the marriage be a happy one?” The same answer was given, in the same manner. Being now satisfied as to his own matrimonial prospects, he concluded to ascertain those of his children, and question No. 3 was asked, as follows:
“Shall I live to see my children happily married?”