tical
reprobate,' I endeavoured to cry out, but I felt a choking sensation in
my throat, caused by the dread which came upon me as Cardillac spoke.
Instead of speaking words, I only gasped out certain unintelligible
sounds. Cardillac again sat down on his bench, drying the perspiration
from his brow. He appeared to be fearfully agitated by his
recollections of the past and to have difficulty in preserving his
composure. But at length he began.

"'Learned men say a good deal about the extraordinary impressions of
which women are capable when _enceinte_, and of the singular influence
which such a vivid involuntary external impression has upon the unborn
child. I was told a surprising story about my mother. About eight
months before I was born, my mother accompanied certain other women to
see a splendid court spectacle in the Trianon.[19] There her eyes fell
upon a cavalier wearing a Spanish costume, who wore a flashing jewelled
chain round his neck, and she could not keep her eyes off it. Her whole
being was concentrated into desire to possess the glittering stones,
which she regarded as something of supernatural origin. Several years
previously, before my mother was married, the same cavalier had paid
his insidious addresses to her, but had been repulsed with indignant
scorn. My mother knew him again; but now by the gleam of the brilliant
diamonds he appeared to her to be a being of a higher race--the paragon
of beauty. He noticed my mother's looks of ardent desire. He believed
he should now be more successful than formerly. He found means to
approach her, and, yet more, to draw her away from her acquaintances to
a retired place. Then he clasped her passionately in his arms, whilst
she laid hold of the handsome chain; but in that moment the cavalier
reeled backwards, dragging my mother to the ground along with him.
Whatever was the cause--whether he had a sudden stroke, or whether it
was due to something else--enough, the man was dead. All my mother's
efforts to release herself from the stiffened arms of the corpse proved
futile. His glazed eyes, their faculty of vision now extinguished, were
fixed upon her; and she lay on the ground with the dead man. At length
her piercing screams for help reached the ears of some people passing
at a distance; they hurried up and freed her from the arms of her
ghastly lover. The horror prostrated her in a serious illness. Her
life, and mine too, was despaired of; but she recovered, and