"Know, then, that in this bowl is a solar powder superlatively
proper to exalt the fire we have within us. The effect of this
exaltation is imminent. It consists of a subtlety of the senses
allowing us to see and touch the aerial figures floating around us.
As soon as you have broken the seal which locks the aperture of this
globe, and inhaled the escaping solar powder, you will in this room
discover one or more creatures resembling women by the system of
curved outlines forming their bodies, but much more beautiful than
was ever any woman, and who are in fact Salamanders. No doubt the
one I saw last year in your father's cookshop will be the first one
to appear here to you, as she has a liking for you, and I strongly
counsel you to hasten to comply with her wishes. And now make
yourself easy in that arm-chair, open the globe, and gently inhale
the contents. Very soon you will see all I have announced to you
realised, point by point. I leave you. Good-bye."

And he disappeared in a manner which was strangely sudden. I
remained alone before that glass globe, hesitating to unlock it,
afraid lest some stupefying exhalation should escape from it. I
thought that perhaps M. d'Asterac had put in it, as an artifice,
some of those vapours which benumb those who inhale them and make
them dream of Salamanders. I was still not enough of a philosopher
to be desirous of becoming happy by such means. Possibly, I said to
myself, such vapours predispose to madness; and finally I became
defiant enough to think of going to the library to ask advice of M.
Jerome Coignard. But I soon became aware that such would be a
needless trouble; as soon as I began to speak to him of solar powder
and aerial genii he would start: "Jacques Tournebroche, remember, my
boy, that you must never put faith in absurdities, but bring home to