y by the conquest, my
better feelings remained untouched. Next day, when I saw the directress,
and when she made an excuse to meet me in the corridor, and besought my
notice by a demeanour and look subdued to Helot humility, I could
not love, I could scarcely pity her. To answer briefly and dryly
some interesting inquiry about my health--to pass her by with a stern
bow--was all I could; her presence and manner had then, and for some
time previously and consequently, a singular effect upon me: they
sealed up all that was good elicited all that was noxious in my nature;
sometimes they enervated my senses, but they always hardened my heart.
I was aware of the detriment done, and quarrelled with myself for the
change. I had ever hated a tyrant; and, behold, the possession of a
slave, self-given, went near to transform me into what I abhorred!
There was at once a sort of low gratification in receiving this luscious
incense from an attractive and still young worshipper; and an irritating
sense of degradation in the very experience of the pleasure. When she
stole about me with the soft step of a slave, I felt at once barbarous
and sensual as a pasha. I endured her homage sometimes; sometimes I
rebuked it. My indifference or harshness served equally to increase the
evil I desired to check.

"Que le dedain lui sied bien!" I once overheard her say to her mother:
"il est beau comme Apollon quand il sourit de son air hautain."

And the jolly old dame laughed, and said she thought her daughter was
bewitched, for I had no point of a handsome man about me, except being
straight and without deformity. "Pour moi," she continued, "il me fait
tout l'effet d'un chat-huant, avec ses besicles."

Worthy old girl! I could have gone and kissed her had she not been a
little too old, too fat, and too red-faced; her sensible, truthful
words seemed so wholesome, contrasted with the morbid illusions of her
daughter.

When Pelet awoke on the morning after his frenzy fit, he retained no
recollection of what had happened the previous night, and his mother
fortunately had the discretion to refrain from informing him that I had
been a witness of his degradation. He did not again have recourse to
wine for curing his griefs, but even in his sober mood he soon showed
that the iron of jealousy had entered into his soul. A thorough
Frenchman, the national characteristic of ferocity had not been omitted
by nature in compounding the ingredients of his chara