“In the manuscript of an adept, which I will shew you, and where you will find the very words you used.” I bowed my head in reply, and we left this curious laboratory. We had scarcely arrived in her room before Madame d’Urfe drew from a handsome casket a little book, bound in black, which she put on the table while she searched for a match. While she was looking about, I opened the book behind her back, and found it to be full of pentacles, and by good luck found the pentacle I had traced on the count’s thigh. It was surrounded by the names of the spirits of the planets, with the exception of those of Saturn and Mars. I shut up the book quickly. The spirits named were the same as those in the works of Agrippa, with which I was acquainted. With an unmoved countenance I drew near her, and she soon found the match, and her appearance surprised me a good deal; but I will speak of that another time. The marchioness sat down on her sofa, and making me to do the like she asked me if I was acquainted with the talismans of the Count de Treves? “I have never heard of them, madam, but I know those of Poliphilus.” “It is said they are the same.” “I don’t believe it.” “We shall see. If you will write the words you uttered, as you drew the pentacle on my nephew’s thigh, and if I find the same talisman with the same words around it, the identity will be proved.” “It will, I confess. I will write the words immediately.” I wrote out the names of the spirits. Madame d’Urfe found the pentacle and read out the names, while I pretending astonishment, gave her the paper, and much to her delight she found the names to be the same. “You see,” said she, “that Poliphilus and the Count de Treves possessed the same art.” “I shall be convinced that it is so, if your book contains the manner of pronouncing the ineffable names. Do you know the theory of the planetary hours?” “I think so, but they are not needed in this operation.” “They are indispensable, madam, for without them one cannot work with any certainty. I drew Solomon’s pentacle on the thigh of Count de la Tour d’Auvergne in the hour of Venus, and if I had not begun with Arael, the spirit of Venus, the operation would have had no effect.” “I did not know that. And after Arael?” “Next comes Mercury, then the Moon, then Jupiter, and then the Sun. It is, you see, the magic cycle of Zoroaster, in which Saturn and Mars are omitted.” “And how would you have proceeded if you had gone to work in the hour of the Moon?” “I should have begun with Jupiter, passed to the Sun, then to Arael or Venus, and I should have finished at Mercury.” “I see sir, that you are most apt in the calculation of the planetary hours.”