ment Esther was so ingenuously overcome by the
convulsive agitation produced by unlooked-for joy, that a fixed smile
parted her lips, like that of a crazy creature. The priest paused,
looking at the girl to see whether, when once she had lost the horrible
strength which corrupt natures find in corruption itself, and was thrown
back on her frail and delicate primitive nature, she could endure so
much excitement. If she had been a deceitful courtesan, Esther would
have acted a part; but now that she was innocent and herself once more,
she might perhaps die, as a blind man cured may lose his sight again if
he is exposed to too bright a light. At this moment this man looked into
the very depths of human nature, but his calmness was terrible in its
rigidity; a cold alp, snow-bound and near to heaven, impenetrable and
frowning, with flanks of granite, and yet beneficent.

Such women are essentially impressionable beings, passing without reason
from the most idiotic distrust to absolute confidence. In this respect
they are lower than animals. Extreme in everything--in their joy and
despair, in their religion and irreligion--they would almost all go mad
if they were not decimated by the mortality peculiar to their class, and
if happy chances did not lift one now and then from the slough in which
they dwell. To understand the very depths of the wretchedness of this
horrible existence, one must know how far in madness a creature can go
without remaining there, by studying La Torpille's violent ecstasy at
the priest's feet. The poor girl gazed at the paper of release with
an expression which Dante has overlooked, and which surpassed the
inventiveness of his Inferno. But a reaction came with tears. Esther
rose, threw her arms round the priest's neck, laid her head on his
breast, which she wetted with her weeping, kissing the coarse stuff that
covered that heart of steel as if she fain would touch it. She seized
hold of him; she covered his hands with kisses; she poured out in a
sacred effusion of gratitude her most coaxing caresses, lavished fond
names on him, saying again and again in the midst of her honeyed words,
"Let me have it!" in a thousand different tones of voice; she wrapped
him in tenderness, covered him with her looks with a swiftness that
found him defenceless; at last she charmed away his wrath.

The priest perceived how well the girl had deserved her nickname; he
understood how difficult it was to resist this bewitc