d Hardy, with an increased agony of curiosity.

"Yes," replied Rodin, in a solemn tone, "he had fearful visions. He saw
the girl, who, for his sake, had died in mortal sin, plunged in the heat
of the everlasting flames of hell! On that fair face, disfigured by
infernal tortures, was stamped the despairing laugh of the damned! Her
teeth gnashed with pain; her arms writhed in anguish! She wept tears of
blood, and, with an agonized and avenging voice, she cried to her
seducer: 'Thou art the cause of my perdition--my curse, my curse be upon
thee!'"

As he pronounced these last words, Rodin advanced three steps nearer to
Hardy, accompanying each step with a menacing gesture. If we remember the
state of weakness, trouble, and fear, in which M. Hardy was--if we
remember that the Jesuit had just roused in the soul of this unfortunate
man all the sensual and spiritual memories of a love, cooled, but not
extinguished, in tears--if we remember, too, that Hardy reproached
himself with the seduction of a beloved object, whom her departure from
her duties might (according to the Catholic faith) doom to everlasting
flames--we shall not wonder at the terrible effect of this
phantasmagoria, conjured up in silence and solitude, in the evening dusk,
by this fearful priest.

The effect on Hardy was indeed striking, and the more dangerous, that the
Jesuit, with diabolical craft, seemed only to be carrying out, from
another point of view, the ideas of Gabriel. Had not the young priest
convinced Hardy that nothing is sweeter, than to ask of heaven
forgiveness for those who have sinned, or whom we have led astray? But
forgiveness implies punishment; and it was to the punishment alone that
Rodin drew the attention of his victim, by painting it in these terrible
hues. With hands clasped together, and eye fixed and dilated, Hardy
trembled in all his limbs, and seemed still listening to Rodin, though
the latter had ceased to speak. Mechanically, he repeated: "My curse, my
curse be upon thee?"

Then suddenly he exclaimed, in a kind of frenzy: "The curse is on me
also! The woman, whom I taught to forget her sacred duties, and to commit
mortal sin--one day plunged in the everlasting flames--her arms writhing
in agony--weeping tears of blood--will cry to me from the bottomless pit:
'My curse, my curse be upon thee!'--One day," he added, with redoubled
terror, "one day?--who knows? perhaps at this moment!--for if the sea
voyage had been fatal to he