. For thou hadst cast me into the deep in the midst of the seas,
and the floods compassed me about."

At the moment when he made his appearance in the full daylight beneath
the lofty arched portal, enveloped in an ample cope of silver barred
with a black cross, he was so pale that more than one person in the
crowd thought that one of the marble bishops who knelt on the sepulchral
stones of the choir had risen and was come to receive upon the brink of
the tomb, the woman who was about to die.

She, no less pale, no less like a statue, had hardly noticed that they
had placed in her hand a heavy, lighted candle of yellow wax; she had
not heard the yelping voice of the clerk reading the fatal contents
of the apology; when they told her to respond with Amen, she responded
Amen. She only recovered life and force when she beheld the priest make
a sign to her guards to withdraw, and himself advance alone towards her.

Then she felt her blood boil in her head, and a remnant of indignation
flashed up in that soul already benumbed and cold.

The archdeacon approached her slowly; even in that extremity, she beheld
him cast an eye sparkling with sensuality, jealousy, and desire, over
her exposed form. Then he said aloud,--

"Young girl, have you asked God's pardon for your faults and
shortcomings?"

He bent down to her ear, and added (the spectators supposed that he
was receiving her last confession): "Will you have me? I can still save
you!"

She looked intently at him: "Begone, demon, or I will denounce you!"

He gave vent to a horrible smile: "You will not be believed. You will
only add a scandal to a crime. Reply quickly! Will you have me?"

"What have you done with my Phoebus?"

"He is dead!" said the priest.

At that moment the wretched archdeacon raised his head mechanically and
beheld at the other end of the Place, in the balcony of the Gondelaurier
mansion, the captain standing beside Fleur-de-Lys. He staggered, passed
his hand across his eyes, looked again, muttered a curse, and all his
features were violently contorted.

"Well, die then!" he hissed between his teeth. "No one shall have
you." Then, raising his hand over the gypsy, he exclaimed in a funereal
voice:--"_I nunc, anima anceps, et sit tibi Deus misenicors_!"*

* "Go now, soul, trembling in the balance, and God have mercy
upon thee."

This was the dread formula with which it was the custom to conclude
these gloomy ceremonies. It was t