r. Is this chamber
displeasing to you? Will you have one more splendid? Speak! Order!"

"Once more, what is the use? What is the use? Oh, if I might here
expect a beloved one, full of the love he inspires and participates, I
would have gold, silks, flowers, perfumes, all the wonders of luxury;
nothing could be too sumptuous, too enchanting to enshrine my love,"
said Cecily, with an impassioned voice.

"Well, these wonders of luxury, say but a word, and--"

"What's the use? What's the use? Why make a frame for which there is no
picture? And the adored one! Where is he,--where is he, master, dear?"

"True," exclaimed the notary, with bitterness, "I am old, I am ugly, I
can only inspire disgust and aversion. She overwhelms me with contempt,
jests at me,--and yet I have not the resolution, the power to send her
away. I have only the resolution to suffer!"

"Oh, silly old mourner! And what an absurd elderly gentleman, with his
sufferings!" cried Cecily, in a contemptuous and sarcastic tone; "he
only knows how to groan, to despair,--and yet he has been for ten days
shut up alone with a young woman in a lone house."

"But this woman scorns me,--this woman is armed,--this woman is shut
up!" groaned the notary, furiously.

"Well, conquer her scorn, make the dagger fall from her hands, compel
her to open the door which separates her from yourself! But not by brute
force, that would be useless."

"How, then?"

"By the strength of your passion."

"Passion! And can I inspire it?"

"Why, you are nothing but a lawyer, affecting piety,--I really pity you.
Is it for me to teach you your part? You are ugly,--be terrible, and one
may forget your ugliness. You are old,--be energetic, and one may forget
your age. You are repulsive,--become menacing. Since you cannot be the
noble steed that neighs proudly in the midst of his harem, do not
become the stupid camel that bends the knee and offers his back; be the
tiger! The old tiger, that roars in the midst of carnage, still excites
admiration; his tigress responds to him from the deepest recesses of the
desert."

At this language, which was not deficient in a sort of natural and hardy
eloquence, Jacques Ferrand shuddered; struck by the expression, wild and
almost fierce, which Cecily's features displayed, as, with her bosom
palpitating, her nostrils open, her mouth defying, she fastened on him
her large and brilliant black eyes. Never had she seemed to him more
fascinating, or m