"It was interested, as you may believe. I made myself the subject of a
course of toxicological research, and, studying my food as it went down,
I identified the frightful ingredients masking the mixtures of tannin
and powdered carbon with which the fish was embalmed; and I penetrated
the disguise of the marinated meats, painted with sauces the colour of
sewage; and I diagnosed the wine as being coloured with fuscin, perfumed
with furfurol, and enforced with molasses and plaster.

"I have promised myself to return every month to register the slow but
sure progress of these people toward the tomb."

"Oh!" cried Mme. Carhaix.

"And you will claim," said Durtal, "that you aren't Satanic?"

"See, Carhaix, he's at it already. He won't even give us time to get our
breath, but must be dogging us about Satanism. It's true I promised him
I'd try and get you to tell us something about it tonight. Yes,"
continued Des Hermies, in response to Carhaix's look of astonishment,
"yesterday, Durtal, who is engaged, as you know, in writing a history of
Gilles de Rais, declared that he possessed all the information there was
about Diabolism in the Middle Ages. I asked him if he had any material
on the Satanism of the present day. He asked me what I was talking
about, and wouldn't believe that these practices are being carried on
right now."

"But they are," replied Carhaix, becoming grave. "It is only too true."

"Before we go any further, there is one question I'd like to put to Des
Hermies," said Durtal. "Can you, honestly, without joking, without