strength of a Hercules; his
terrific expression was softened by benignity assumed at will; but a
complexion of impenetrable bronze inspired feelings of repulsion rather
than attachment for the man.

The strange diplomatist looked somewhat like a bishop, for he wore
powder on his long, thick hair, after the fashion of the Prince de
Talleyrand; a gold cross, hanging from a strip of blue ribbon with
a white border, indicated an ecclesiastical dignitary. The outlines
beneath the black silk stockings would not have disgraced an athlete.
The exquisite neatness of his clothes and person revealed an amount of
care which a simple priest, and, above all, a Spanish priest, does not
always take with his appearance. A three-cornered hat lay on the front
seat of the carriage, which bore the arms of Spain.

In spite of the sense of repulsion, the effect made by the man's
appearance was weakened by his manner, fierce and yet winning as it was;
he evidently laid himself out to please Lucien, and the winning manner
became almost coaxing. Yet Lucien noticed the smallest trifles uneasily.
He felt that the moment of decision had come; they had reached the
second stage beyond Ruffec, and the decision meant life or death.

The Spaniard's last words vibrated through many chords in his heart,
and, to the shame of both, it must be said that all that was worst in
Lucien responded to an appeal deliberately made to his evil impulses,
and the eyes that studied the poet's beautiful face had read him very
clearly. Lucien beheld Paris once more; in imagination he caught again
at the reins of power let fall from his unskilled hands, and he avenged
himself! The comparisons which he himself had drawn so lately between
the life of Paris and life in the provinces faded from his mind with the
more painful motives for suicide; he was about to return to his
natural sphere, and this time with a protector, a political intriguer
unscrupulous as Cromwell.

"I was alone, now there will be two of us," he told himself. And then
this priest had been more and more interested as he told of his sins
one after another. The man's charity had grown with the extent of his
misdoings; nothing had astonished this confessor. And yet, what could
be the motive of a mover in the intrigues of kings? Lucien at first was
fain to be content with the banal answer--the Spanish are a generous
race. The Spaniard is generous! even so the Italian is jealous and a
poisoner, the Frenchman