Although a certain amount of repetition is inevitable in a canvas so considerable and so full of detail as a complete picture of French society in the nineteenth century, it is needless to repeat the description of Mme. Fontaine’s den, already given in _Les Comediens sans le savoir_; suffice it to say that Mme. Cibot used to go to Mme. Fontaine’s house in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple as regularly as frequenters of the Cafe Anglais drop in at that restaurant for lunch. Mme. Cibot, being a very old customer, often introduced young persons and old gossips consumed with curiosity to the wise woman. The old servant who acted as provost marshal flung open the door of the sanctuary with no further ceremony than the remark, “It’s Mme. Cibot.--Come in, there’s nobody here.” “Well, child, what can bring you here so early of a morning?” asked the sorceress, as Mme. Fontaine might well be called, for she was seventy-eight years old, and looked like one of the Parcae. “Something has given me a turn,” said La Cibot; “I want the _grand jeu_; it is a question of my fortune.” Therewith she explained her position, and wished to know if her sordid hopes were likely to be realized. “Do you know what the _grand jeu_ means?” asked Mme. Fontaine, with much solemnity. “No, I haven’t never seen the trick, I am not rich enough.--A hundred francs! It’s not as if it cost so much! Where was the money to come from? But now I can’t help myself, I must have it.” “I don’t do it often, child,” returned Mme. Fontaine; “I only do it for rich people on great occasions, and they pay me twenty-five louis for doing it; it tires me, you see, it wears me out. The ‘Spirit’ rives my inside, here. It is like going to the ‘Sabbath,’ as they used to say.” “But when I tell you that it means my whole future, my dear good Ma’am Fontaine--” “Well, as it is you that have come to consult me so often, I will submit myself to the Spirit!” replied Mme. Fontaine, with a look of genuine terror on her face. She rose from her filthy old chair by the fireside, and went to a table covered with a green cloth so worn that you could count the threads. A huge toad sat dozing there beside a cage inhabited by a black disheveled-looking fowl. “Astaroth! here, my son!” she said, and the creature looked up intelligently at her as she rapped him on the back with a long knitting-needle.--“And you, Mademoiselle Cleopatre!--attention!” she continued, tapping the ancient fowl on the beak. Then Mme. Fontaine began to think; for several seconds she did not move; she looked like a corpse, her eyes rolled in their sockets and grew white; then she rose stiff and erect, and a cavernous voice cried: “Here I am!”