snake, to
be overwhelmed by a well-nigh magical power. He was compelled to endure
that homicidal gaze; he met and shunned it incessantly.

"I am thirsty; give me some water----" he said again to the second.

"Are you nervous?"

"Yes," he answered. "There is a fascination about that man's glowing
eyes."

"Will you apologize?"

"It is too late now."

The two antagonists were placed at fifteen paces' distance from each
other. Each of them had a brace of pistols at hand, and, according to
the programme prescribed for them, each was to fire twice when and how
he pleased, but after the signal had been given by the seconds.

"What are you doing, Charles?" exclaimed the young man who acted as
second to Raphael's antagonist; "you are putting in the ball before the
powder!"

"I am a dead man," he muttered, by way of answer; "you have put me
facing the sun----"

"The sun lies behind you," said Valentin sternly and solemnly, while he
coolly loaded his pistol without heeding the fact that the signal had
been given, or that his antagonist was carefully taking aim.

There was something so appalling in this supernatural unconcern, that it
affected even the two postilions, brought thither by a cruel curiosity.
Raphael was either trying his power or playing with it, for he talked
to Jonathan, and looked towards him as he received his adversary's
fire. Charles' bullet broke a branch of willow, and ricocheted over the
surface of the water; Raphael fired at random, and shot his antagonist
through the heart. He did not heed the young man as he dropped; he
hurriedly sought the Magic Skin to see what another man's life had cost
him. The talisman was no larger than a small oak-leaf.

"What are you gaping at, you postilions over there? Let us be off," said
the Marquis.

That same evening he crossed the French border, immediately set out for
Auvergne, and reached the springs of Mont Dore. As he traveled, there
surged up in his heart, all at once, one of those thoughts that come
to us as a ray of sunlight pierces through the thick mists in some dark
valley--a sad enlightenment, a pitiless sagacity that lights up the
accomplished fact for us, that lays our errors bare, and leaves
us without excuse in our own eyes. It suddenly struck him that the
possession of power, no matter how enormous, did not bring with it the
knowledge how to use it. The sceptre is a plaything for a child, an axe
for a Richelieu, and for a Napoleon a lever by