“Besides,” my father went on, “I have but little regret over it. I have it from hearsay that it is an ugly beast, hairy and horned, with big claws.” “What an error!” replied the man in black. “Salamanders resemble women, or, to speak precisely, nymphs, and they are perfectly beautiful! But I feel myself rather a simpleton to ask you if you’re able to see this one. One has to be a philosopher to see a Salamander, and I do not think philosophers could be found in this kitchen.” “You may be mistaken, sir,” said the Abbé Coignard. “I am a Doctor of Divinity and Master of Arts. I have also studied the Greek and Latin moralists, whose maxims have strengthened my soul in the vicissitudes of my life, and I have particularly applied Boethius as an antidote for the evils of existence. And here near me is Jacobus Tournebroche, my disciple, who knows the sentences of Publius Syrus by heart.” The stranger turned his yellow eyes on the priest, eyes strangely marked over a nose like the beak of an eagle, and excused himself with more courtesy than his fierce mien led one to expect, for not having at once recognised a person of merit, and further he said: “It is very likely that this Salamander has come for you or your pupil. I saw it very distinctly in passing along the street before this cookshop. She would appear better if the fire were fiercer; for this reason it is necessary to stir the fire vigorously when you believe A Salamander to be in it.” At the first movement the stranger made to rummage again in the fire, Friar Ange anxiously covered the soup-tureen with a flap of his frock and shut his eyes. “Sir,” said the Salamander-man, “allow your young pupil to approach the fireplace to say if he does not see something resembling a woman hovering over the flames.” At this very moment the smoke rising under the slab of the chimney bent itself with a peculiar gracefulness, and formed rotundities quite likely to be taken for well-arched loins by a rather strangely strained imagination. Therefore I did not tell an absolute lie by saying that, maybe, I saw something. No sooner had I given this reply than the stranger, raising his huge arm, gave me a straight hander on the shoulder so powerful that I thought my collar-bone was broken. But at once he said to me, with a very sweet voice and a benevolent look: “My child, I have been obliged to give you so strong an impression that you may never forget that you have seen a Salamander, which is a sign that your destiny is to become a learned man, perhaps a magician. Your face also made me surmise favourably of your intelligence.” “Sir,” said my mother, “he learns anything he wants to know and he’ll be a priest if it pleases our Lord.” M. Jérôme Coignard added that I had profited in a certain way by his lessons, and my father asked the stranger if his lordship would not be disposed to eat a morsel.