What! was the madman then beginning to cast his heart thus on the roads, and could he feel smitten by this creature whom he had scarcely met?

No, it was not she whom he loved, but she had just made the over-full cup run over.  She or another, it was indifferent to him.  His altered feelings of desire needed at length to drink freely.  He was thirsty, what signified to him the vessel?

Hitherto he had only felt that ordinary confusion which the chaste man experiences in presence of the woman, for hitherto his sight bad only paused complacently upon pretty fresh faces, and if his thought wandered beyond, he drove it back with care to his very inmost being; but now that he had seen the naked breast of a pretty girl, that he had relished it with his gaze, embraced it with his desire, that he had yielded to a fatal forgetfulness, his flesh, so long subdued and humiliated, profited by that moment of error, and subdued him in its turn.

A kind of frenzy had taken possession of his being in a moment, and in the sleepless night which he had just passed, he had given himself up to an absolute orgy in his over-excited imagination.

That wandering girl who had just disappeared, had carried away his modesty.

He felt his heart beating for her; but he felt that his heart was beating for all alike; girls or women, he wanted them all, he defiled them all with his thoughts.

And so, after ten years of struggles, the virtue of the Cure of Althausen dissolved one evening before the naked breast of a rope-dancer, like snow before the sun.

That day was a Sunday, and, as he did not come downstairs, his servant came to warn him that the time for Mass was drawing near.

She stood struck with the strange look on his countenance, at the fatigue displayed on his features, and anxiously enquired of him the cause.

The Cure assured her that she was mistaken, that he bad never felt better; but at the same time he gave a glance at his mirror.

He was frightened at his face and he remained a long time thoughtful, contemplating the gloomy fire of his own look.

That sinister countenance seemed to him to presage some approaching calamity.

Thus, there are men whom fate has marked on the forehead with a fatal stamp.  The mysterious sign is not displayed at every time and before all; but at certain epochs of life, when the unknown breath caresses the predestinated or cursed head, the mark all at once appeals, like a tawny light in the depth of night.

A curse!  Fatality has moulded that man’s brain, it has left its potent impress on his skull.

—­With what seal then am I marked? he cried.  Is it that of reprobation which God has stamped upon my face?

No, simpleton that thou art, it is the phosphorus of thy brain, which catches fire from time to time.

IX.