Stronger and stronger! The answers seemed to me to indicate the minutest acquaintance with every detail of my little romance, of which not even the Marquis knew anything! And I, the questioner, masked and robed so that my own brother could not have known me! "You said I loved someone. Am I loved in return?" I asked. "Try." I was speaking lower than before, and stood near the dark man with the beard, to prevent the necessity of his speaking in a loud key. "Does anyone love me?" I repeated. "Secretly," was the answer. "Much or little?" I inquired. "Too well." "How long will that love last?" "Till the rose casts its leaves." The rose--another allusion! "Then--darkness!" I sighed. "But till then I live in light." "The light of violet eyes." Love, if not a religion, as the oracle had just pronounced it, is, at least, a superstition. How it exalts the imagination! How it enervates the reason! How credulous it makes us! All this which, in the case of another I should have laughed at, most powerfully affected me in my own. It inflamed my ardor, and half crazed my brain, and even influenced my conduct. The spokesman of this wonderful trick--if trick it were--now waved me backward with his wand, and as I withdrew, my eyes still fixed upon the group, and this time encircled with an aura of mystery in my fancy; backing toward the ring of spectators, I saw him raise his hand suddenly, with a gesture of command, as a signal to the usher who carried the golden wand in front. The usher struck his wand on the ground, and, in a shrill voice, proclaimed: "The great Confu is silent for an hour." Instantly the bearers pulled down a sort of blind of bamboo, which descended with a sharp clatter, and secured it at the bottom; and then the man in the tall fez, with the black beard and wand, began a sort of dervish dance. In this the men with the gold wands joined, and finally, in an outer ring, the bearers, the palanquin being the center of the circles described by these solemn dancers, whose pace, little by little, quickened, whose gestures grew sudden, strange, frantic, as the motion became swifter and swifter, until at length the whirl became so rapid that the dancers seemed to fly by with the speed of a mill-wheel, and amid a general clapping of hands, and universal wonder, these strange performers mingled with the crowd, and the exhibition, for the time at least, ended. The Marquis d'Harmonville was standing not far away, looking on the ground, as one could judge by his attitude and musing. I approached, and he said: "The Count has just gone away to look for his wife. It is a pity she was not here to consult the prophet; it would have been amusing, I daresay, to see how the Count bore it. Suppose we follow him. I have asked him to introduce you." With a beating heart, I accompanied the Marquis d'Harmonville. Chapter XIV MADEMOISELLE DE LA VALLIÈRE