bleached by darkness. There was a kind of effeminate grace about
him; the fancies peculiar to wealthy invalids were also noticeable. His
hands were soft and white, like a pretty woman's; he wore his fair hair,
now grown scanty, curled about his temples with a refinement of vanity.

The Greek cap that he wore was pulled to one side by the weight of its
tassel; too heavy for the light material of which it was made. He
had let the paper-knife fall at his feet, a malachite blade with gold
mounting, which he had used to cut the leaves of the book. The amber
mouthpiece of a magnificent Indian hookah lay on his knee; the enameled
coils lay like a serpent in the room, but he had forgotten to draw out
its fresh perfume. And yet there was a complete contradiction between
the general feebleness of his young frame and the blue eyes, where all
his vitality seemed to dwell; an extraordinary intelligence seemed to
look out from them and to grasp everything at once.

That expression was painful to see. Some would have read despair in
it, and others some inner conflict terrible as remorse. It was the
inscrutable glance of helplessness that must perforce consign its
desires to the depths of its own heart; or of a miser enjoying in
imagination all the pleasures that his money could procure for him,
while he declines to lessen his hoard; the look of a bound Prometheus,
of the fallen Napoleon of 1815, when he learned at the Elysee the
strategical blunder that his enemies had made, and asked for twenty-four
hours of command in vain; or rather it was the same look that Raphael
had turned upon the Seine, or upon his last piece of gold at the
gaming-table only a few months ago.

He was submitting his intelligence and his will to the homely
common-sense of an old peasant whom fifty years of domestic service had
scarcely civilized. He had given up all the rights of life in order to
live; he had despoiled his soul of all the romance that lies in a wish;
and almost rejoiced at thus becoming a sort of automaton. The better to
struggle with the cruel power that he had challenged, he had followed
Origen's example, and had maimed and chastened his imagination.

The day after he had seen the diminution of the Magic Skin, at his
sudden accession of wealth, he happened to be at his notary's house. A
well-known physician had told them quite seriously, at dessert, how
a Swiss attacked by consumption had cured himself. The man had never
spoken a word for