manufacture.

"But I warn you, you'll be at some disadvantage, sir, to compete
with Mosaide in the knowledge of human antiquities. He has
rediscovered monuments which were believed to have been lost; among
others, the column of Seth and the oracles of Sambethe the daughter
of Noah and the most ancient of the sybils."

"Oh!" exclaimed my tutor as he stamped on the powdery floor so that
a cloud of dust whirled up. "Oh! what dreams! It is too much, you
make fun of me! And M. Mosaide cannot have so much foolery in his
head, under his large bonnet, resembling the crown of Charlemagne;
that column of Seth is a ridiculous invention of that shallow
Flavius Josephus, an absurd story by which nobody has been imposed
upon before you. And the predictions of Sambethe, Noah's daughter, I
am really curious to know them; and M. Mosaide, who seems to be
pretty sparing of his words, would oblige by uttering a few by words
of mouth, because it is not possible for him, I am quite pleased to
recognise it, to pronounce them by the more secret voice in which
the ancient sybils habitually gave their mysterious responses."

Mosaide, who seemed to hear nothing, said suddenly:

"Noah's daughter has spoken; Sambethe has said: 'The vain man who
laughs and mocks will not hear the voice which goes forth from the
seventh tabernacle, the infidel walketh miserably to his ruin.'"

After this oracular pronouncement all three of us took leave of
Mosaide.