What could so sensible a man as the abbe mean by encouraging him in his nonsense? He was sitting there now with head thrown back, and the placid air of one who knows how to enjoy digestion, rapping out now and then a leading question, such as would put Clovis on his mettle. Was she, Gabrielle, in the wrong to despise these things? It seemed so. Her husband dabbled in philanthropy; the abbe was an excellent man, bent on doing good to his fellows; and this was the reason for the interest of both in Mesmer. "Just think!" the marquis was observing with regret, "what good work might be done in the district if we could inaugurate a magic tub! The mists rising from the Loire generate rheumatism and paralysis, to say nothing of fevers, all of which, by means of a blessed bucket, might cease to exist except in fable. Why! this gloomy old prison-house might become a central office from which benefits would be scattered broadcast; its primaeval bloodstains might come in time to be washed away with Mesmer's tincture of iron!" "Why not?" murmured the abbe, with increasing interest. "Alas!" sighed Clovis. "The arrangement of the tub, it seems, is a matter of the most delicate nicety, which cannot be described by letter. If Mesmer would only visit us? But he is afraid now, he says, to venture into France." "Why not go to him--Mahomet and the mountain, you know," suggested Pharamond. "Or get him to lend you for a time one of his cultured adepts." "Ah! if he would do that!" echoed Clovis, eagerly. "If he would lend me somebody who knows." "Our dear Gabrielle would not stand an adept!" cried the abbe, with laughter. "See how distressed she looks at my poor suggestion! Nay, sweet sister; I was only jesting. In sooth, this new-fangled bucket is too large a bolus to swallow. The idea of sensible people squatting round a tub with glass wands pressed against their temples!" Pharamond's access of facetiousness nettled the marquis, who remarked peevishly, "What a puzzle you are! Too gifted and too learned, I should have thought, to mock as the ignorant do at all that they cannot fathom." "Nay! I did not mean to anger you!" cried Pharamond, still laughing. "But I was bound to reassure our hostess as to an irruption of adepts. Come, come. Let her enjoy the evening air. Show me the plans and instructions, and while I endeavour to decipher them, play me a tune on the 'cello."