It all happened on a certain winter evening more than a year ago, after the last men’s dinner-party I gave to my friends in the little house which I had taken furnished in the Avenue Victor Hugo.

As my projected move was nothing more than the gratification of my vagrant fancy, we had celebrated my house-unwarming as joyfully as we had celebrated the warming of yore, and the time for liqueurs having come (and also the time for jokes) each of us did his best to shine—more especially of course, that naughty fellow Gilbert, Marlotte, our paradoxical friend, the “Triboulet” of our band, and Cardaillac, our licensed wizard.

I cannot remember now exactly how it came about, but after an hour spent in the smoking-room, somebody switched off the electric light, and urged us to have some table-turning; so we grouped ourselves in the darkness round a little table. This “somebody” (please observe) was not Cardaillac; but perhaps he was in league with Cardaillac—if indeed Cardaillac was the guilty party.

We were exactly eight men in all, eight skeptics versus a little insignificant table which had only one stem divided off at the end into three legs, and whose round top bent under our sixteen hands placed on it in accordance with occult rites!

It was Mariotte who instructed us in these rites. He had at one time been an anxious inquirer about witchcraft, and familiar with table-turning, though merely as an outsider, and as he was our customary buffoon, when we saw him assume the direction of the sÉance, every one just let himself go in anticipation of some excellent clowning.

Cardaillac found himself my right-hand neighbor. I heard him stifle a laugh in his throat and cough. Then the table began to turn.

Gilbert questioned it, and to his obvious stupefaction it replied by dry cracklings like those made by creaking woodwork, and corresponding to the esoteric alphabet.

Mariotte translated in a quavering voice.

Then everybody wanted to question the table; and in its replies it gave proof of great sagacity. The audience became serious; one did not know what to think. Queries leapt to our lips, and the replies were rapped out from the foot of the table, near me—as I fancied—and towards my right.“Who will live in this house in a year’s time?” asked in his turn he who had proposed the spiritualistic amusement.

“Oh, if you question it about the future,” said Mariotte, “you will only get back thumping lies, or else it will hold its tongue.”

“Oh, shut up,” interposed Cardaillac. The question was repeated—“Who will live in this house in a year’s time?”

“Nobody,” said the interpreter.

“And in two years’ time?”

“Nicolas Vermont.”

All of us heard this name for the first time.

“What will he be doing at this very hour on the anniversary of to-day? Tell us what he is doing—speak.”

“He is beginning ... to write here ... his adventures.”

“Can you read what he writes?”

“Yes ... and also what he will write.”

“Tell us the beginning, just the beginning.”

“Am tired—alphabet too tedious—Give typewriter ... will inspire typist.”

A murmur went round in the darkness. I rose and went to fetch my typewriter, and it was placed upon the table.

“It’s a ‘Watson,’” said the table. “I won’t have it. Am a French table. Want a French machine ... want a ‘Durand.’”“‘A Durand?’” said my neighbor on the left, in a disillusioned tone. “Does that brand exist? I don’t know it.”

“Nor I.”

“Nor I.”

“Nor I.”

We were much vexed at this untoward circumstance, when the voice of Cardaillac said slowly:

“I use nothing but a ‘Durand,’ would you like me to fetch it?”

“Can you type without seeing?”

“I shall be back in a quarter of an hour,” said he—and he went out without answering.

“Oh, if Cardaillac is going to take it up,” said one of the guests, “we shall have a merry time.”

However, when the lights were turned up, the faces seemed sterner than one would have expected. Mariotte was quite pale.

Cardaillac came back in a very short time—an astonishingly short time, one might have said. He sat down in front of the table facing his “Durand” machine, and darkness was once more established. Suddenly the table declared: “No need of others.... Put your feet on mine ... type.”

One heard the tapping of the fingers on the keys.

“It’s extraordinary!” exclaimed the typist-medium, “It’s extraordinary! My hands are writing of their own accord.”

“What bosh!” whispered Mariotte.

“I swear they are, I swear it,” said Cardaillac.

We remained a long time listening to the tapping of the keys which was every now and then broken by the ringing of the bell at the end of the line and the rasping of the carriage. Every five minutes a sheet was handed to us. We decided to retire to the drawing-room and to read them aloud as Gilbert, getting them from Cardaillac, handed them to us.

Page 79 was deciphered in the morning light and the machine stopped.

But what it had typed seemed to us exciting enough to make us beg Cardaillac to be good enough to give us the sequel.

He did so. And when he had passed many nights seated at the little table with his typing keyboard, we had the complete story of M. Vermont’s adventures.

The reader shall now be told them.

They are strange and scandalous; their future scribe is bound not to think of printing them. He will burn them as soon as they are finished; so that, had it not been for the complaisance of the little table, no one would ever have turned the leaves. That is why I, convinced of their authenticity, consider it piquant to publish them beforehand.

For I hold them to be “veridical,”—as the elect call it—although they have some of the characteristics of wild caricature, and rather resemble an art-student’s funny sketch penciled by way of commentary on the margin of an engraving representing Science herself.

Are they possibly apocryphal? Well, fables are reputed to be more seductive than History, and Cardaillac’s will not seem inferior to many another one.

My hope, however, is that “Dr. Lerne” is the truthful account of real happenings, for in that case, since the little table uttered a prophecy, the tribulations of the hero have not yet begun, and they will be running their course at the very time that this book is divulging them—a very interesting circumstance indeed.

At any rate I shall certainly know in two years’ time if M. Nicolas Vermont lives in the little house in the Avenue Victor Hugo. Something assures me of it in advance—for how can one accept the idea of Cardaillac—a serious-minded and intelligent fellow—squandering so many hours in composing such a fable? That is my principal argument in favor of its truthfulness.

However, if any conscientious reader desires to find reasons for the faith that is in him, let him betake himself to Grey-l’Abbaye. There he will be informed about the existence of Professor Lerne and his habits. For my part I have not got the leisure for that, but I entreat any one who may undertake the search to let me know the truth, being myself very desirous of getting to the bottom of the question whether the following tale is a mystification of Cardaillac’s, or was really typed out by a clairvoyant table.