This was quite a new light in the life of this man. Until that time Gannot had known women; he had not known woman. His life of mad debauchery, of gambling, violent emotions, spent on the pavements of the boulevards, and in the bars of houses of ill-fame, and among the walks of the _bois_, was followed by one of retirement and love; for he loved this beautiful unknown woman to distraction and almost to madness. She was married. Often, after their hours of delirious ecstacy, when the moment of parting had to come, when tears filled their eyes and sobs their breasts, they plotted together the death of the man who was the obstacle to their intoxicating passion; but they got no further to the completion of crime than thinking of it. She wished at least to fly with him; but, on the very day they had arranged to take flight, she arrived at Gannot's house with a pocket-book full of bank notes stolen from her husband. Gannot was horrified with the theft and declined the money. Next day she returned with no other fortune than the clothes she wore, not even a chain of gold round her neck or a ring on her finger. And then he took her away. Complicated by this fresh element in his life, he took his flight into more impossible regions than ever before; his was the type of nature which is carried away by all kinds of impulses. If the principle M. Guizot lays down be true: "Bodies always fall on the side towards which they incline," the Mapah was bound to fall some day or other, for he inclined to many sides! Gambling and love admirably suited the instincts of that eccentric life; but gambling--houses were closed! And the woman he loved died! Then was it that the god was born in him from inconsolable love and the suppressed passion for play. He was seized by illness, during which the spirit of this dead woman visited him every night, and revealed to him the doctrines of his new religion. Haunted by the hallucinations of love and fever, Gannot listened to himself in the voice which spoke within him. But he was no longer Gannot, he was transfigured. CHAPTER VIII The god and his sanctuary--He informs the Pope of his overthrow--His manifestoes--His portrait--Doctrine of escape--Symbols of that religion--Chaudesaigues takes me to the Mapah--Iswara and Pracriti--Questions which are wanting in actuality--War between the votaries of _bidja_ and the followers of _sakti_--My last interview with the Mapah