“I was frozen with fear, and I could not put faith in his assurances. Suddenly remembering that the night before, I had received from my confessor a reliquary containing a bit of the true cross, I went for it to my cabinet, and slipped it carefully into my bosom. ‘Be it so, sir,’ I said to him. ‘Come, I am ready to listen to you.’ Be just to me, my friend. You have never known me to be a coward. I retain all my faculties; very well, I swear to you that to be there, alone with such a companion, I had to summon all my powers of body and soul. After carefully closing the door, the Man in Black said to me: ‘Mademoiselle, it is the work of an honest man I am about to accomplish. I do but ask of you to be secret upon the disclosure I am about to make to you, and I believe you to be too entirely a woman of honour to do harm to a person whose sole desire is to make things agreeable to you.’ “This preamble was sufficiently reassuring; but my horror of him was hardly less intense, and I kept the holy relic close pressed against my bosom, to ward off the influences of the spirit of evil. The Man in Black drew forward a chair for me, and seated himself on a stool beside me. “‘I am not the devil, Mademoiselle,’ he continued. ‘I am not even the same who once had the honour of paying you a visit.’ “I trembled, but looked at him with a little less terror. “‘What, sir, you are not—’ “‘No,’ said he, without permitting me to finish my sentence, ‘it was my father.’ “‘Your father?’ “‘Yes, a Portuguese Jew, who profoundly studied the art of healing. I bear him a very close resemblance, Mademoiselle.’ “‘It is terrible, sir.’ “‘All the more that I have been careful to wear the same clothes. The resemblance is my fortune. Countless people have been deceived as you have been; but your mistake might have grave consequences, and that is why I disabuse you.’ “I began to breathe more freely. ‘But is this that you tell me really true?’ “‘You still doubt? So much the better. If the most _spirituelle_ woman of the century has believed in the immortality of the man, what of the others? I give myself, as you know better than anybody, for some hundred years of age. My son, in fifty years’ time, will be able to double that. I have only verbal traditions, he will have written traditions. I shall bequeath him a great number of secrets, and many family histories. It is certain that there will not be wanting many persons who, having seen me in my early life, will take him to be me, as you have taken me for my father. Only, our fortune having accumulated very largely, I shall wish him to bear a title. He will be called the Count de St Germain.’ “‘I am overwhelmed with astonishment,’ I said. ‘And what is the use of this ruse? Why perpetuate such a resemblance from father to son?’