We fell into conversation, and I was delighted to find that Carrier had a wide and erudite knowledge of early books on magical practice. This he told me he had gained principally by spare-time study at the Librairie de Paris, but also from the loan of books from friends. He had, it appeared, catalogued several private collections of works on psychic and supernormal subjects. I took him off to lunch with me at the Café Bastien, and he explained that he was completing a catalogue or bibliography of books on magic published previously to 1850. “There are,” said he, “a number of missing works referred to by contemporary authors. Of these there is little knowledge, but little by little I am rewriting them.” “Automatic writing or original deductive work?” I asked him. “Automatic--_pur et simple_,” he replied. “My control is called Fernand de Féques and was a monk of the Abbey of Saint-Barnabe near Blagues. Thanks to his help, I have recovered amazing things that were lost.” He sank his voice as he told me and his leopard eyes seemed to glow golden as the wine in his glass. “I know the secrets of the lost inner ritual of the Illuminati,” he told me. “I have recovered Pietro Zarantino’s invocation, and could I only master ancient Greek I could lay the secrets of the Bacchæ bare. But their confused script paralyses my hand and I must keep to French and Latin.” I knew too much of the vast breadth and heritage of knowledge that the Hermetic philosophers inherited from the Gnostics to doubt his words. Revealed knowledge may sometimes appear to be withdrawn for a while, but it will inevitably be re-disclosed. Having an appointment to keep, I made a note of his address and promised to resume our acquaintanceship on another day. A week later I had had leisure to go through my manuscripts. They were very interesting, but verbose, and were full of curiously involved obliquities of meaning and contained some peculiar Hebrew charms of Kabbalistic significance. By either bad luck or the design of some earlier owner, two pages of the invocatory ritual for the raising of the spirits of the dead were missing. It occurred to me that Carrier might be able to fill the gap by means of automatic writing, so I wrote to him suggesting the attempt and asking him to my rooms. He replied by return, expressing his willingness to help, and adding that his control had assented, but desired me to visit him in his own rooms in order that he might not be disturbed by novel surroundings. The next night I went to Carrier’s. He lived in one of those dull meandering streets that rise from the mass of the city toward Montparnasse. The house was an old tumble down warren, dirty and ill-kept, the various floors let out in rooms or suites of apartments to tenants who were none too particular in their choice of lodging. By the light of a match I examined the grimy cards pinned in the hallway, and at last located Carrier’s name as owner of the back room on the third floor.