rch did not rebuke. In this particular chapel a lady was kneeling
close to the railing on a handsome rug of red velvet with gold tassels,
precisely opposite to the seat vacated of the burgher. A silver-gilt
lamp, hanging from the vaulted ceiling of the chapel before an altar
magnificently decorated, cast its pale light upon a prayer-book held
by the lady. The book trembled violently in her hand when the young man
approached her.

"A-men!"

To that response, sung in a sweet low voice which was painfully
agitated, though happily lost in the general clamor, she added rapidly
in a whisper:--

"You will ruin me."

The words were said in a tone of innocence which a man of any delicacy
ought to have obeyed; they went to the heart and pierced it. But the
stranger, carried away, no doubt, by one of those paroxysms of passion
which stifle conscience, remained in his chair and raised his head
slightly that he might look into the chapel.

"He sleeps!" he replied, in so low a voice that the words could be heard
by the young woman only, as sound is heard in its echo.

The lady turned pale; her furtive glance left for a moment the vellum
page of the prayer-book and turned to the old man whom the young man had
designated. What terrible complicity was in that glance? When the young
woman had cautiously examined the old seigneur, she drew a long breath
and raised her forehead, adorned with a precious jewel, toward a picture
of the Virgin; that simple movement, that attitude, the moistened
glance, revealed her life with imprudent naivete; had she been wicked,
she would certainly have dissimulated. The personage who thus alarmed
the lovers was a little old man, hunchbacked, nearly bald, savage in
expression, and wearing a long and discolored white beard cut in a
fan-tail. The cross of Saint-Michel glittered on his breast; his coarse,
strong hands, covered with gray hairs, which had been clasped, had
now dropped slightly apart in the slumber to which he had imprudently
yielded. The right hand seemed about to fall upon his dagger, the hilt
of which was in the form of an iron shell. By the manner in which he
had placed the weapon, this hilt was directly under his hand; if,
unfortunately, the hand touched the iron, he would wake, no doubt,
instantly, and glance at his wife. His sardonic lips, his pointed chin
aggressively pushed forward, presented the characteristic signs of a
malignant spirit, a sagacity coldly cruel, that would surely