sionate gaze
upon this beautiful creature, who had seated herself opposite to him,
and who hardly touched the dishes which had been placed before her. From
time to time Francois leaned across the table to kiss one of the hands
of his silent guest, who, as pale as death, seemed as insensible to his
kisses as if her hand had been sculptured in alabaster, which, for
transparency and perfect whiteness, it so much resembled. From time to
time Henri started, raised his hand to his forehead, and with it wiped
away the death-like sweat which rose on it, and asked himself: "Is she
alive, or dead?"

The duke tried his utmost efforts and displayed all his powers of
eloquence to unbend the rigid beauty of her face.

Remy, the only attendant, for the duke had sent every one away, waited
on them both, and, occasionally, lightly touching his mistress with his
elbow as he passed behind her chair, seemed to revive her by the
contact, and to recall her to life, or rather to the position in which
she was placed.

Thereupon, a bright flush spread over her whole face, her eyes sparkled,
she smiled as if some magician had touched a spring unknown to this
automaton-like figure, seemingly endowed with intelligence, and the
mechanism of which had drawn the lightning glance from her eyes, the
glowing flush on her cheek, and the sparkling smile to her lips. The
moment after, she again subsided into her calm and statue-like
stillness. The prince, however, approached her, and by the passionate
tone of his conversation, seemed as if he had succeeded in warming into
animation his new conquest. Thereupon Diana, who occasionally glanced at
the face of a magnificent clock suspended over the prince's head,
against the opposite side of the wall to where she was seated, seemed to
make an effort over herself, and with her lips bedecked with smiles took
a more active part in the conversation.

Henri, concealed in his leafy covert, wrung his hands in despair, and
cursed the whole creation in the utter wretchedness of his sore
distress. It seemed to him monstrous, almost iniquitous, that this
woman, so pure and rigidly inflexible, should yield herself so
unresistingly to the prince, because he was a prince, and abandon
herself to love because it was offered within the precincts of a palace.
His horror at Remy was so extreme that he could have slain him without
remorse, in order to see whether so great a monster had the blood and
heart of a man in him. In