“You can, sir,” replied the barber. “The wound is not a good one, but yet not of the kind by which one dies at once. It’s one of those wounds which play with the wounded like a cat with a mouse, and with such play time may be gained.” “That’s well,” said the vicar. “Let’s thank God, my son, that He lets you live, but life is precarious and transitory. One must always be ready to quit it.” My good tutor replied earnestly: “To be on the earth without being of it, to possess without being in possession, for the fashion of this world passes away.” Picking up his shears and his basket, the vicar said: “Better than by your cloak and shoes, which I see on yonder cupboard, I recognise by your speech that you belong to the Church and lead a holy life. Have you been ordained?” “He is a priest,” I said, “a doctor of divinity and a professor of eloquence.” “Of which diocese?” queried the vicar. “Of Seez in Normandy, a suffragan of Rouen.” “An important ecclesiastical province,” said the vicar, “but less important by antiquity and fame than the diocese of Reims, of which I am a priest.” And he went away. M. Jerome Coignard passed the day easily. Jahel wanted to remain the night with him. At about eleven o’clock I left the house of M. Coquebert and went in search of a bed at the inn of M. Gaulard. I found M. d’Asterac in the market place. His shadow in the moonlight covered nearly all the surface. He laid his hands on my shoulder as he was wont to do, and said with his customary gravity: “It’s time for me to assure you, my son, that I have accompanied Mosa’ide for nothing else than this. I see you cruelly tormented by the goblins. Those little spirits of the earth have attacked you, deceiving you with all sorts of phantasmagoria, seducing you by a thousand lies, and finally forcing you to fly from my house.” “Alas! sir,” I replied, “it’s quite true that I left your house in apparent ingratitude, for which I beg your pardon. But I have been persecuted by the constables, and not by goblins. And my dear tutor has been murdered. That’s not a phantasmagoria.” “Do not doubt,” the great man answered, “that the unhappy abbe has been mortally wounded by the Sylphs, whose secrets he has revealed. He has stolen from a sideboard some stones, which were the work of the Sylphs, and which they left unfinished, and still very different from diamonds in brilliancy as well as in purity. “It was that avidity, and the indiscreet pronouncing of the name of Agla, which has angered them. You must know, my son, that it is impossible for philosophers to arrest the vengeance of this irascible people. “I have heard from a supernatural voice, and also from Criton’s reports, of the sacrilegious larceny M. Coignard committed by which he flattered himself to find out the art by which Salamanders, Sylphs, and Gnomes ripen the morning dew and insensibly change it into crystals and diamonds.”