! It
looks at me, that head of death! It speaks! The livid lips move and say,
'Come--come--come!' I will not--I will not! Demon, leave me! Go--go--go!
And this other woman?--ah, beautiful, beautiful!--Jacques, I am the
Duchesse de Lucenay. See my angelic figure,--my smile,--my bold glance!
Come, come! Yes, I come. But wait! And who is this one who turns away
her face? Oh, Cecily--Cecily! Yes, Jacques, 'tis Cecily! You see the
three Graces,--Louise, the duchess, and myself. Choose! Beauty of the
people, patrician beauty, the savage beauty of the tropics,--and hell
with us! Come--come! Hell with you? Yes!" shrieked Jacques Ferrand,
again rising on his knees, and extending his arms to seize these
phantoms.

This last effort was followed by a mortal throe, and he fell back again
stiff and lifeless; his eyes starting from their orbits, whilst fierce
convulsions were visible on his features, unnaturally distorted; a
bloody foam on his lips; his voice hoarse and strangling, like that of
a person in hydrophobia, for, in its last paroxysm, this fearful malady
shows the same symptoms as madness. The breath of this monster was
extinguished in the midst of a final and horrible vision, for he
stammered forth these words, "Black night!--black spectres!--skeletons
of brass, red-hot with fire! Unfold me! Their burning fingers make my
flesh smoke; my marrow is scorched! Fleshless, horrid spectre! No--no!
Cecily--fire--flame--agony--Cecily!"

These were Jacques Ferrand's last words, and Rodolph left the place
overcome with horror.

CHAPTER IV.

THE HOSPITAL.

It will be remembered that Fleur-de-Marie, saved by La Louve, had been
conveyed not far from the Isle du Ravageur to the country-house of
Doctor Griffon, one of the surgeons of the hospital, to whom we shall
now introduce the reader. This learned doctor, who had obtained from
high influence his position in the hospital, considered the wards as a
kind of school of experiments, where he tried on the poor the remedies
and applications which he afterwards used with his rich clients.

These terrible experiments were, indeed, a human sacrifice made on the
altar of science; but Doctor Griffon did not think of that. In the eyes
of this prince of science, as they say in our days, the hospital
patients were only a matter of study and experiment; and as, after all,
there resulted from his essays occasionally a useful fact or a discovery
acquired by science, the doctor showed hi