"Sir," said the Salamander-man, "allow your young pupil to approach
the fireplace to say if he does not see something resembling a woman
hovering over the flames."

At this very moment the smoke rising under the slab of the chimney
bent itself with a peculiar gracefulness, and formed rotundities
quite likely to be taken for well-arched loins by a rather strangely
strained imagination. Therefore I did not tell an absolute lie by
saying that, maybe, I saw something.

No sooner had I given this reply than the stranger, raising his huge
arm, gave me a straight hander on the shoulder so powerful that I
thought my collar-bone was broken. But at once he said to me, with a
very sweet voice and a benevolent look:

"My child, I have been obliged to give you so strong an impression
that you may never forget that you have seen a Salamander, which is
a sign that your destiny is to become a learned man, perhaps a
magician. Your face also made me surmise favourably of your
intelligence."

"Sir," said my mother, "he learns anything he wants to know and
he'll be a priest if it pleases our Lord."

M. Jerome Coignard added that I had profited in a certain way by his
lessons, and my father asked the stranger if his lordship would not
be disposed to eat a morsel.

"I am not in want of anything," said the stranger, "and it's easy