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 her--if a
shipwreck--oh, God! she too would have died in mortal sin--lost, lost,
forever!--Oh, have mercy on her, my God! Crush me in Thy wrath--but have
mercy on her--for I alone am guilty!"

And the unfortunate man, almost delirious, sank with clasped hands upon
the ground.

"Sir," cried Rodin, in an affectionate voice, as he hastened to lift him
up, "my dear sir--my dear friend--be calm! Comfort yourself. I cannot
bear to see you despond. Alas! my intention was quite the contrary to
that."

"The curse! the curse! yes, she will curse me also--she, that I loved