possible for
the beholder to avoid asking himself whether there were indeed spirits
of flame--salamandrines--who sometimes existed out of their own element
and lived and moved as mortals.

'Have I given you a strange and fearful picture? Be sure that I have not
conveyed to you one thousandth part of the impression made upon myself,
and that until the day I die that strange apparition will remain stamped
upon the tablets of my mind. Diabolical beauty! infernal ugliness!--I
would give half my life, be it longer or shorter, to be able to explain
whence such things can come, to confound and stupefy all human
calculation!'

CHAPTER II.

MORE OF PARISIAN FORTUNE-TELLERS--THE VISIONS OF THE WHITE
MIST--REBELLION, GRIEF, HOPE, BRAVERY AND DESPAIR

It was after a second bottle of green-seal had flashed out its sparkles
into the crystal, that Ned Martin drew a long breath like that drawn by
a man discharging a painful and necessary duty, and resumed his story:

'You may some time record this for the benefit of American men and
women,' he went on, 'and if you are wise you will deal chiefly in the
language to which they are accustomed. I speak the French, of course,
nearly as well and as readily as the English; but I _think_ in my native
tongue, as most men continue to do, I believe, no matter how many
dialects they acquire; and I shall not interlard this little narrative
with any French words that can just as well be translated into our
vernacular.

'Well, as I was saying, there stood my horribly beautiful fiend, and
there I sat spell-bound before her. As for Adolph, though he had told me
nothing in advance of the peculiarities of her appearance, he had been
fully aware of them, of course, and I had the horrible surprise all to
myself. I think the sorceress saw the mingled feeling in my face, and
that a smile blended of pride and contempt contorted the proud features
and made the ghastly face yet more ghastly for one moment. If so, the
expression soon passed away, and she stood, as before, the incarnation
of all that was terrible and mysterious. At length, still retaining her
place and fixing her eyes upon Von Berg, she spoke, sharply, brusquely,
and decidedly:

''You are here again! What do you want?'

''I wish to introduce my friend, the Baron Charles Denmore, of England,'
answered Von Berg, 'who wishes----'

''Nothing!' said the sorceress, the word coming from her lips with an
unmistakably hissing sound.