yself before your eyes."

"Well now, it is at any rate certain," said De Scuderi when she had
read it, "that this mysterious man, even if he does really belong to
the notorious band of thieves and robbers, yet has no evil designs
against me. If he had succeeded in speaking to me that night, who knows
whether I should not have learnt of some singular event or some
mysterious complication of things, respecting which I now try in vain
to form even the remotest guess. But let the matter now take what shape
it may, I shall certainly do what this note urgently requests me to do,
if for no other reason than to get rid of those ill-starred jewels,
which I always fancy are a talisman of the foul Fiend himself. And I
warrant Cardillac, true to his rooted habit, won't let it pass out of
his hands again so easily."

The very next day De Scuderi intended to go and take the jewellery to
the goldsmith's. But somehow it seemed as if all the wits and
intellects of entire Paris had conspired together to overwhelm
Mademoiselle just on this particular morning with their verses and
plays and anecdotes. No sooner had La Chapelle[17] finished reading a
tragedy, and had slyly remarked with some degree of confident assurance
that he should now certainly beat Racine, than the latter poet himself
came in, and routed him with a pathetic speech of a certain king, until
Boileau appeared to let off the rockets of his wit into this black sky
of Tragedy--in order that he might not be talked to death on the
subject of the colonnade[18] of the Louvre, for he had been penned up
in it by Dr. Perrault, the architect.

It was high noon; De Scuderi had to go to the Duchess de Montansier's;
and so the visit to Master Rene Cardillac's was put off until the next
day. Mademoiselle, however, was tormented by a most extraordinary
feeling of uneasiness. The young man's figure was constantly before her
eyes; and deep down in her memory there was stirring a dim recollection
that she had seen his face and features somewhere before. Her sleep,
which was of the lightest, was disturbed by troublesome dreams. She
fancied she had acted frivolously and even criminally in having delayed
to grasp the hand which the unhappy wretch, who was sinking into the
abyss of ruin, was stretching up towards her; nay, she was even haunted
by the thought that she had had it in her power to prevent a fatal
event from taking place or an enormous crime from being committed. So,
as soon as