“I feel degraded in your presence, and oh, what happiness that is!  How insipid it is to be a grandee!  I am noble; what can be more tiresome?  Disgrace is a comfort.  I am so satiated with respect that I long for contempt.  We are all a little erratic, from Venus, Cleopatra, Mesdames de Chevreuse and de Longueville, down to myself.  I will make a display of you, I declare.  Here’s a love affair which will be a blow to my family, the Stuarts.  Ah!  I breathe again.  I have discovered a secret.  I am clear of royalty.  To be free from its trammels is indeed deliverance.  To break down, defy, make and destroy at will, that is true enjoyment.  Listen, I love you.”

She paused; then with a frightful smile went on, “I love you, not only because you are deformed, but because you are low.  I love monsters, and I love mountebanks.  A lover despised, mocked, grotesque, hideous, exposed to laughter on that pillory called a theatre, has for me an extraordinary attraction.  It is tasting the fruit of hell.  An infamous lover, how exquisite!  To taste the apple, not of Paradise, but of hell—­such is my temptation.  It is for that I hunger and thirst.  I am that Eve, the Eve of the depths.  Probably you are, unknown to yourself, a devil.  I am in love with a nightmare.  You are a moving puppet, of which the strings are pulled by a spectre.  You are the incarnation of infernal mirth.  You are the master I require.  I wanted a lover such as those of Medea and Canidia.  I felt sure that some night would bring me such a one.  You are all that I want.  I am talking of a heap of things of which you probably know nothing.  Gwynplaine, hitherto I have remained untouched; I give myself to you, pure as a burning ember.  You evidently do not believe me; but if you only knew how little I care!”

Her words flowed like a volcanic eruption.  Pierce Mount Etna, and you may obtain some idea of that jet of fiery eloquence.

Gwynplaine stammered, “Madame—­”

She placed her hand on his mouth.  “Silence,” she said.  “I am studying you.  I am unbridled desire, immaculate.  I am a vestal bacchante.  No man has known me, and I might be the virgin pythoness at Delphos, and have under my naked foot the bronze tripod, where the priests lean their elbows on the skin of the python, whispering questions to the invisible god.  My heart is of stone, but it is like those mysterious pebbles which the sea washes to the foot of the rock called Huntly Nabb, at the mouth of the Tees, and which if broken are found to contain a serpent.  That serpent is my love—­a love which is all-powerful, for it has brought you to me.  An impossible distance was between us.  I was in Sirius, and you were in Allioth.  You have crossed the immeasurable space, and here you are.  ’Tis well.  Be silent.  Take me.”