ames
which the fiery _simoom_ of passion breathed on him, and he felt the frenzy
taking possession of his pillow, he turned towards the wall and looked at
this new companion. Sometimes a moon-beam came and lighted up the hideous
skull and played in the gloomy cavities of its sightless eyes. The head
then seemed to become animate and its bare teeth gave an infernal grin.

This was his remedy for love.

But we grow used to everything. Custom destroys sensations. Death and its
mysteries, the horrible, and all its threatening shapes soon present
nothing to our eyes but worn-out pictures. He accustomed himself to
contemplate without emotion this lugubrious ruin. As before, the frenzy
seized him and shook him before the skull. It did more. It clothed it again
with flesh. It planted long hairs upon that shining, yellow forehead. It
placed in the hollow orbits large eyes full of love; it hid the wasted
cartillages under quivering nostrils, and upon that horrible jaw it laid
rosy lips and a sweet mouth, like a maiden's first kiss. And it is thus
that it appeared to him in the shadow, wrapped in the curtains of his bed,
like a modest girl who hides herself from sight.

"Oh! sweet phantom, return to life," he said. "Take again thy body adorned
with its graces and with its charms; come, clothed in thy sixteen years."

And he stretched his arms towards the enchanting vision, while the
death's-head, with its bare jaw, gave its eternal grin.

He woke and found himself kneeling near his bed, facing the wreck of
humanity.

Horror soiled him. His empty room was filled with spectres. He saw
hell-hags with death's-heads sporting and swarming on his bed. At the same
time, little sharp, hasty, shrill knocks shook his window.

Fall of terror he ran to open it. A gust of wind, mingled with rain and
hail, heat against his face. He was ashamed of his fears and leant his head
out to catch the beneficent shower. His brain cooled and his blood grew
calm.

He was there for a few minutes, when all at once, under the trees in the
market-place, he thought he distinguished two motionless shadows. He
thought for an instant that his hallucination lasted still, but soon the
shadows drew near. They seemed to walk carefully under the young foliage of
the limes in order to avoid the rain, and in one of them he recognized
distinctly Suzanne.

XXXIV.

THE PROHIBITION.

"Do you know any means of making
a woman do that which she has deci