The lady continues her survey of the scientific repository; and the conjurer, with an air of importance, proposes to her to draw, for two _sous_, a motto from Merlin's wheel. "Take one, my dear," says the husband; "I wish to know whether you love me." The wife blushes and hesitates; the husband insists; she refuses, and is desirous of continuing her walk, saying that it is all foolishness.--"What if it is?" rejoins the husband, "I've paid, so take a motto to please me." For this once, the lady is quite at a nonplus; she at last consents, and, with a trembling hand, draws a card from the magic wheel: the husband unrolls it with eagerness and confidence, and reads these words: "_My young lover is and will be constant_."--"What the devil does this mean?" exclaims the old husband; quite disconcerted. --"'Tis a mistake," says the conjurer; "the lady put her hand into the wrong box; she drew the motto from the wheel for _young girls_, instead of that for _married women_. Let _Madame_ draw again, she shall pay nothing more."--"No, Mr. Conjurer," replies the shopkeeper, "that's enough. I've no faith in such nonsense; but another time, madam, take care that you don't put your hand into the wrong box." The fat lady, with her face as red as fire, follows her husband, who walks off grumbling, and it is easy to see, by their gestures, that the fatal motto has sown discord in the family, and confirmed the shopkeeper's suspicions. Independently of these divers into futurity, the corners of streets and walls of public squares, are covered with hand-bills announcing books containing secrets, sympathetic calculations of numbers in the lottery, the explanation of dreams in regard to those numbers, together with the different manners of telling fortunes, and interpreting prognostics. At all times, the marvellous has prevailed over simple truth, and the Cumæan Sibyl attracted the inquisitive in greater crowds than Socrates, Plato, or any philosopher, had pupils in the whole course of their existence. In Paris, the sciences are really making a rapid progress, notwithstanding the fooleries of the pseudo-philosophers, who parade the streets, and here, on the _Boulevards_, as well as in other parts of the town, exhibit lessons of physics. One has an electrifying machine, and phials filled with phosphorus: for two _sous_, he gives you a slight shock, and makes you a present of a small phial. Farther on, you meet with a _camera obscura_, whose effect surprises the spectators the more, as the objects represented within it have the motion which they do not find in common optics.