It all happened on a certain winter evening more than a year ago, after the last men’s dinner-party I gave to my friends in the little house which I had taken furnished in the Avenue Victor Hugo. As my projected move was nothing more than the gratification of my vagrant fancy, we had celebrated my house-_un_warming as joyfully as we had celebrated the _warming_ of yore, and the time for liqueurs having come (and also the time for jokes) each of us did his best to shine--more especially of course, that naughty fellow Gilbert, Marlotte, our paradoxical friend, the “Triboulet” of our band, and Cardaillac, our licensed wizard. I cannot remember now exactly how it came about, but after an hour spent in the smoking-room, somebody switched off the electric light, and urged us to have some table-turning; so we grouped ourselves in the darkness round a little table. This “somebody” (please observe) was not Cardaillac; but perhaps he was in league with Cardaillac--if indeed Cardaillac _was_ the guilty party. We were exactly eight men in all, eight skeptics _versus_ a little insignificant table which had only one stem divided off at the end into three legs, and whose round top bent under our sixteen hands placed on it in accordance with occult rites! It was Mariotte who instructed us in these rites. He had at one time been an anxious inquirer about witchcraft, and familiar with table-turning, though merely as an outsider, and as he was our customary buffoon, when we saw him assume the direction of the _séance_, every one just let himself go in anticipation of some excellent clowning. Cardaillac found himself my right-hand neighbor. I heard him stifle a laugh in his throat and cough. Then the table began to turn. Gilbert questioned it, and to his obvious stupefaction it replied by dry cracklings like those made by creaking woodwork, and corresponding to the esoteric alphabet. Mariotte translated in a quavering voice. Then everybody wanted to question the table; and in its replies it gave proof of great sagacity. The audience became serious; one did not know what to think. Queries leapt to our lips, and the replies were rapped out from the foot of the table, near me--as I fancied--and towards my right. “Who will live in this house in a year’s time?” asked in his turn he who had proposed the spiritualistic amusement. “Oh, if you question it about the future,” said Mariotte, “you will only get back thumping lies, or else it will hold its tongue.” “Oh, shut up,” interposed Cardaillac. The question was repeated--“Who will live in this house in a year’s time?” “Nobody,” said the interpreter. “And in two years’ time?” “Nicolas Vermont.” All of us heard this name for the first time. “What will he be doing at this very hour on the anniversary of to-day? Tell us what he is doing--speak.” “He is beginning ... to write here ... his adventures.” “Can you read what he writes?” “Yes ... and also what he _will_ write.”