ce that infernal creole
kindled the inextinguishable flame which is consuming this man." After
some minutes of further meditation, Polidori left the bedside and
walked slowly up and down the chamber.

The tempest was still raging without, and fell with such fury on this
dilapidated house as to shake it to its centre. Despite his audacity and
wickedness, Polidori was superstitious, and dark forebodings came over
him; he felt an undefinable uneasiness. In order to dissipate his gloomy
thoughts, he again examined Ferrand's features.

"Now," he said, leaning over him, "his eyelids are injected. It would
seem as though his blood flowed thither and stagnated. No doubt his
sight will now present, as his hearing did just now, some remarkable
appearance! What agonies now they endure! How they vary! Oh," he added,
with a bitter smile, "when nature determines on being cruel and playing
the part of a tormentor, she defies all the efforts of man; and thus in
this illness, caused by an erotic frenzy, she submits every sense to
unheard-of, superhuman tortures."

The storm still howled without, and Polidori, throwing himself into an
armchair, exclaimed, "What a night! What a night! Nothing could be worse
for Jacques's present state. Yes," he continued, "the prince is
pitiless, and it would have been a thousand times better for Ferrand to
have allowed his head to fall upon a scaffold; better fire, the wheel,
molten lead, which burns and eats into the flesh, than the miserable
punishment he endures! As I see him suffer I begin to feel affright for
my own fate! What will become of me? What is in reserve for me as the
accomplice of Jacques? To be his gaoler will not suffice for the
prince's vengeance. Perhaps a perpetual imprisonment in the prisons of
Germany awaits me! But that is better than death! Yet I know that the
prince's word is sacred! But I, who have so often violated all laws,
human and divine, dare I invoke a sworn promise? Inasmuch as it was to
my interest that Jacques should not escape, so will it be equally my
interest to prolong his days. But his symptoms grow worse and worse;
nothing but a miracle can save him. What is to be done? What is to be
done?"

At this moment, a crash without, occasioned by the fall of a stack of
chimneys, roused Jacques Ferrand, and he turned on his bed.

Polidori became more and more under the influence of the vague terror
which had seized on him. "It is folly to believe in presentments," he