order. And the embarrassment of the moment
was singularly increased by the presence of the old hag. Love takes
pleasure or fright at all, all has meaning for it, everything is an omen
of happiness or sorrow for it.

This decrepit woman was there like a suggestion of catastrophe, and
represented the horrid fish's tail with which the allegorical geniuses
of Greece have terminated their chimeras and sirens, whose figures, like
all passions, are so seductive, so deceptive.

Although Henri was not a free-thinker--the phrase is always a
mockery--but a man of extraordinary power, a man as great as a man can
be without faith, the conjunction struck him. Moreover, the strongest
men are naturally the most impressionable, and consequently the most
superstitious, if, indeed, one may call superstition the prejudice of
the first thoughts, which, without doubt, is the appreciation of the
result in causes hidden to other eyes but perceptible to their own.

The Spanish girl profited by this moment of stupefaction to let herself
fall into the ecstasy of that infinite adoration which seizes the heart
of a woman, when she truly loves and finds herself in the presence of
an idol for whom she has vainly longed. Her eyes were all joy, all
happiness, and sparks flew from them. She was under the charm, and
fearlessly intoxicated herself with a felicity of which she had dreamed
long. She seemed then so marvelously beautiful to Henri, that all this
phantasmagoria of rags and old age, of worn red drapery and of the green
mats in front of the armchairs, the ill-washed red tiles, all this sick
and dilapidated luxury, disappeared.

The room seemed lit up; and it was only through a cloud that one could
see the fearful harpy fixed and dumb on her red sofa, her yellow eyes
betraying the servile sentiments, inspired by misfortune, or caused by
some vice beneath whose servitude one has fallen as beneath a tyrant who
brutalizes one with the flagellations of his despotism. Her eyes had the
cold glitter of a caged tiger, knowing his impotence and being compelled
to swallow his rage of destruction.

"Who is that woman?" said Henri to Paquita.

But Paquita did not answer. She made a sign that she understood no
French, and asked Henri if he spoke English.

De Marsay repeated his question in English.

"She is the only woman in whom I can confide, although she has sold me
already," said Paquita, tranquilly. "My dear Adolphe, she is my mother,
a slave bo