"Can you swear he was wrong," I exclaimed, laughing,—"you who could not play a hand at baccarat if Jacques Molan looked at you?"
"What do we really know of what we are pleased to call chance?" said Claude. "But at that time it was not the idea that struck my mind, it was the word. In those days all unknown terms, or words I could only half understand, fairly bewitched me. What a shudder ran through me when I heard those mysterious syllables, 'fetich'; I couldn't express the feeling even now to any one but you. From other remarks of my cousin, I guessed—as far as a child was capable of guessing—the meaning of the word, and I amused myself by repeating it, 'Fetich!' As soon as we returned to the salon after dinner, I seated myself as usual on that little low chair which you were so fond of, on the back of which is carved the fable of the Fox and the Stork, Mr. Fox, crouching down with his nose in the air, is looking at Madame Stork as she runs her long throat down the narrow neck of the bottle. Every part of the room, lighted on this occasion by four tall lamps, was in keeping with the countenances of the persons assembled there, who were discussing the same subjects and sitting on the same furniture (of the purest style of the Empire) as in the days of my grandfather, the old notary and Voltairean. His portrait, hanging on the wall, bore a most extraordinary likeness to
