life. I entreat you to ask the oracle how I can recover my voice. How
delighted I should be if I could sing by to-morrow. I have a great many
people coming here, and I should enjoy the general astonishment. If the
oracle wills it I am sure that it might be so, for I have a very strong
chest. That is my question; it is a long one, but so much the better; the
answer will be long too, and I like long answers."

I was of the same opinion, for when the question was a long one, I had
time to think over the answer as I made the pyramid. Madame Rumain's
complaint was evidently something trifling, but I was no physician, and
knew nothing about medicine. Besides, for the honour of the cabala, the
oracle must have nothing to do with mere empiric remedies. I soon made up
my mind that a little care in her way of living would soon restore the
throat to its normal condition, and any doctor with brains in his head
could have told her as much. In the position I was in, I had to make use
of the language of a charlatan, so I resolved on prescribing a ceremonial
worship to the sun, at an hour which would insure some regularity in her
mode of life.

The oracle declared that she would recover her voice in twenty-one days,
reckoning from the new moon, if she worshipped the rising sun every
morning, in a room which had at least one window looking to the east.

A second reply bade her sleep seven hours in succession before she
sacrificed to the sun, each hour symbolizing one of the seven planets;
and before she went to sleep she was to take a bath in honour of the
moon, placing her legs in lukewarm water up to the knees. I then pointed
out the psalms which she was to recite to the moon, and those which she
was to say in the face of the rising sun, at a closed window.