The memory of this famous orator brought us naturally on the subject of Academies, and my strange host declared to me that he didn’t disdain, in many cases, to inspire the pens, the words, and the consciences of pedagogues, and that he almost always assisted in person, in spite of being invisible, at all the scientific meetings. Encouraged by so much kindness I asked him if he had any news of God--who has not his hours of impiety?--especially as the old friend of the Devil. He said to me, with a shade of unconcern united with a deeper shade of sadness: “We salute each other when we meet.” But, for the rest, he spoke in Hebrew. It is uncertain if his Highness has ever given so long an audience to a simple mortal, and I feared to abuse it. Finally, as the dark approached shivering, this famous personage, sung by so many poets, and served by so many philosophers who work for his glory’s sake without being aware of it, said to me: “I want you to remember me always, and to prove to you that I--of whom one says so much evil--am often enough _bon diable_, to make use of one of your vulgar locutions. So as to make up for the irremediable loss that you have made of your soul, I shall give you back the stake you ought to have gained, if your fate had been fortunate--that is to say, the possibility of solacing and of conquering, during your whole life, this bizarre affection of _ennui_, which is the source of all your maladies and of all your miseries. Never a desire shall be formed by you that I will not aid you to realize; you will reign over your vulgar equals; money and gold and diamonds, fairy palaces, shall come to seek you and shall ask you to accept them without your having made the least effort to obtain them; you can change your abode as often as you like; you shall have in your power all sensualities without lassitude, in lands where the climate is always hot, and where the women are as scented as the flowers.” With this he rose up and said good-bye to me with a charming smile. If it had not been for the shame of humiliating myself before so immense an assembly, I might have voluntarily fallen at the feet of this generous Gambler, to thank him for his unheard-of munificence. But, little by little, after I had left him, an incurable defiance entered into me; I dared no longer believe in so prodigious a happiness; and as I went to bed, making over again my nightly prayer by means of all that remained in me in the matter of faith, I repeated in my slumber: “My God, my Lord, my God! Do let the Devil keep his word with me!” THE THREE LOW MASSES[18] A CHRISTMAS STORY BY ALPHONSE DAUDET [18] From _The Fig and the Idler, an Algerian Legend, and Other Stories_, by Alphonse Daudet. London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1892. (By permission of the Publisher.) I “Two truffled turkeys, Garrigou?”