, will enable me to found the
institution I was speaking to you of, and of which I have entirely
sketched out the plan. I am about to lay it before you, and to ask your
assistance in improving it where necessary."

"My noble-minded friend," exclaimed the abbe, with the deepest and
holiest admiration, "how naturally and unostentatiously you do these
things! Ah, well might I say there were but few who resembled you; and
upon the heads of such too many blessings can scarcely be prayed for and
wished."

"Few persons, like my friend Jacques here," said Polidori, with an
ironical smile, which wholly escaped the abbe, "are fortunate enough to
possess both piety and riches, charity and discrimination as to the
right channel into which to pour their wealth, in order that it may work
well for the good of their soul."

At this repetition of sarcastic eulogium, the notary's hand became
clenched with internal emotion, while, through his spectacles, he darted
a look of deadly hatred on Polidori.

"Do you perceive, M. l'Abbe," said the dear friend of Jacques Ferrand,
hastily, "he has these convulsive twitchings of the limbs
continually?--and yet he will not have any advice. He really makes me
quite wretched to see him, as it were, killing himself! Nay, my
excellent friend, spite of those displeased looks, I will persist in
declaring, in the presence of M. l'Abbe, that you are destroying
yourself by refusing all succour as you do."

As Polidori uttered these words, a convulsive shudder shook the
notary's whole frame; but in another instant he had regained the mastery
over himself, and was calm as before. A less simple-minded man than the
abbe might have perceived, both during this conversation and in that
which followed, a something unnatural in the language and forced actions
of Jacques Ferrand, for it is scarcely necessary to state that his
present proceedings were dictated to him by a will and authority he was
powerless to resist, and that it was by the command of Rodolph the
wretched man was compelled to adopt words and conduct diametrically the
reverse of his own sentiments or inclinations. And so it was that, when
sore pressed, the notary seemed half inclined to resist the arbitrary
and invisible power he found himself obliged to obey. But a glance at
Polidori soon put an end to his indecision, and, restraining all his
rage and impotent fury, Jacques Ferrand forbore any further
manifestation of futile rage, and bent beneath