"The dark curtain suddenly fell, and the singular vision faded with the reflected light which had filled the room. The moment after, I heard the shuffling feet of the slattern girl coming to show us out of the room, but, singularly enough, as you will think, not out of the _house_! Without a word we followed her--Adolph, who knew the customs of the place, merely slipping a twenty-franc piece into her hand; and in a moment more we were out in the street and walking up the Rue Saint Denis. It is not worth while to detail the conversation which followed between us as we passed up to the Rue Marie Stuart, I to my lodgings and Adolph to his own, further on, close to the Rue Vivienne and not far from the Boulevard Montmartre. Of course I asked him fifty questions, the replies to which left me quite as much in the dark as before. He knew, he said, and hundreds of other persons in Paris knew, the singularity of the personal appearance of the sorceress, and her apparent power of divination, but neither he nor they had any knowledge of her origin. He had been introduced at her house several months before, and had asked questions affecting his family in Prussia and the chances of descent of certain property, the replies to which had astounded him. He had heard of her using marvellous and fearful incantations, but had never himself witnessed any thing of them. In two or three instances, before the present, he had taken friends to the house and introduced them under any name which he chose to apply to them for the time, and the sorceress had never before chosen to call him to account for the deception, though, according to the assurances of his friends after leaving the house, she had never failed to arrive at the truth of their nationalities and positions in life. There must have been something in myself or my circumstances, he averred, which had produced so singular an effect upon the witch, (as he evidently believed her to be,) and he had the impression that at no distant day I should again hear from her. That was all, and so we parted, I in any other condition of mind than that promising sleep, and really without closing my eyes, except for a moment or two at a time, during the night which followed. When I did attempt to force myself into slumber, a red spectre stood continually before me, an unearthly light seemed to sear my covered eyeballs, and I awoke with a start. Days passed before I sufficiently wore away the impression to be comfortable, and at least two or three weeks before my rest became again entirely unbroken.