lear earrings, blazing with a
lustre which could not be borrowed or false; she had rings on her
skeleton hands, with thick gold hoops, and stones--purple, green, and
blood-red. Hunchbacked, dwarfish, and doting, she was adorned like a
barbarian queen.

"Que me voulez-vous?" said she, hoarsely, with the voice rather of male
than of female old age; and, indeed, a silver beard bristled her chin.

I delivered my basket and my message.

"Is that all?" she demanded.

"It is all," said I.

"Truly, it was well worth while," she answered. "Return to Madame Beck,
and tell her I can buy fruit when I want it, et quant a ses
felicitations, je m'en moque!" And this courteous dame turned her back.

Just as she turned, a peal of thunder broke, and a flash of lightning
blazed broad over salon and boudoir. The tale of magic seemed to
proceed with due accompaniment of the elements. The wanderer, decoyed
into the enchanted castle, heard rising, outside, the spell-wakened
tempest.

What, in all this, was I to think of Madame Beck? She owned strange
acquaintance; she offered messages and gifts at an unique shrine, and
inauspicious seemed the bearing of the uncouth thing she worshipped.
There went that sullen Sidonia, tottering and trembling like palsy
incarnate, tapping her ivory staff on the mosaic parquet, and muttering
venomously as she vanished.

Down washed the rain, deep lowered the welkin; the clouds, ruddy a
while ago, had now, through all their blackness, turned deadly pale, as
if in terror. Notwithstanding my late boast about not fearing a shower,
I hardly liked to go out under this waterspout. Then the gleams of
lightning were very fierce, the thunder crashed very near; this storm
had gathered immediately above Villette; it seemed to have burst at the
zenith; it rushed down prone; the forked, slant bolts pierced athwart
vertical torrents; red zigzags interlaced a descent blanched as white
metal: and all broke from a sky heavily black in its swollen abundance.

Leaving Madame Walravens' inhospitable salon, I betook myself to her
cold staircase; there was a seat on the landing--there I waited.
Somebody came gliding along the gallery just above; it was the old
priest.

"Indeed Mademoiselle shall not sit there," said he. "It would
displeasure our benefactor if he knew a stranger was so treated in this
house."

And he begged me so earnestly to return to the salon, that, without
discourtesy, I could not but comply. The sm