“Well, I don’t understand at all.” “Pardieu! I can believe that; nor do those people who question the somnambulists; and that is just wherein the charm of it lies; if they knew what to think about it, it would no longer be possible to earn one’s living with magnetism and somnambulism. But will you be my assistant and help me with my business, or not? I will feed you well, I will dress you suitably, and you will see the country, for I never stay long in the same place.” “And all I shall have to do for that is to make pills and sleep?” “Not another thing!” “Then, it’s agreed, I will go with you.” So I became the little hunchback’s assistant. We reached a village that night. My patron went to the best inn, and ordered a very good supper. It seemed to me very pleasant to travel on horseback, without having to worry about my meals. Moreover, I was always at liberty to leave my companion when I chose, and that reason was enough to make me enjoy myself with him; the certainty of being free gives a charm to existence and makes the most trivial incidents enjoyable; bondage, on the contrary, throws a tinge of gloom over all our actions; it causes us to shun pleasure; it takes away all the joy of love, it deprives the heart of all its strength and the imagination of all its vivacity. This that I am saying, Sans-Souci, is not my own; it is a sentence which my godfather repeated to me often, and which I remembered easily because it harmonized with my taste. When I awoke the next morning, my hunchback, whose name was Graograicus--a name which he had probably manufactured for himself, and which no one could pronounce without making a wry face, which made it altogether impressive--my little hunchback, as I said, suggested giving me a lesson in somnambulism, which we were to practise in the first place of any importance in which we might stop. I accepted his proposition. He made me sit down, told me to stare at vacancy as if I were looking at nothing, and taught me to sleep with my eyes open; but, as that tired my eyes, he allowed me to close them when we only had peasants or poor devils to cure. Then came the matter of philters; my companion was out of them, and it was necessary to prepare more. While I was cleaning a dozen or more four-ounce phials, which were to contain the charms, Master Graograicus went out to purchase plants, roots, and such other ingredients as he needed in the manufacture of the philters. He lighted a fire, and borrowed from our host all the bowls that he had; and our bedroom, where everything was turned topsy-turvy, began, in my companion’s language, to be a workshop of chemistry and magic. “Look here,” I said to my hunchback, while he was pulverizing burdock, and I was rolling cinnamon, “what are you going to use these things for that you are making? I am willing to be your assistant, but only on condition that you teach me your mysteries.”