Felix regained his room, bolted the door, and counted the immense sum contained in the pocket-book with excitement bordering on frenzy.  Then he bathed his burning head with cold water, and threw an anxious look around the room.

“I must have had an attack of fever,” he muttered.

[Illustration:  A TROPIC FOREST.—­GRANVILLE PERKINS]

“Mandarins don’t rise from the dead, and a man can’t kill another by simply lifting his finger.  So my philosopher talked like one who knows nothing of moral experience.  If the fancy of an unreal crime almost drove me mad, what must be the remorse of an actual criminal?”

The same evening Felix ordered post horses and set out for
France.

Some months later, Monsieur Montmorot, chevalier of the legion of honor, gave a grand dinner to celebrate his daughter’s betrothal with the Marquis Felix d’Aubremel, one of the noblest names in France, as he styled it.  The contract settling a part of his fortune on his daughter Ernestine was signed at nine in the evening.  The Monday following the pair presented themselves before the civil officials to solemnize their marriage by due legal ceremonies.

Felix, a prey to the strange hallucination that incessantly pursued him, saw a likeness between the official and the Chinese figure he had awkwardly thrown down and broken one night long ago.  Presently his face darkened, and his eyes began to burn.  Behind the magistrate’s blue spectacles he caught the gleam and roll of the tawny eyes belonging to Mr. Harrison’s clerk, to Li, son of Mung, son of Tseu.

When at length the magistrate put the formal question, “Felix Etienne d’Aubremel, do you take for your wife Ernestine Juliette Montmorot,” Felix heard a shrill ringing voice say, “Felix, I give you your wife with my hand—­my hand.”

The official repeated the question more loudly.  “With my hand—­my hand,” whispered a thousand mocking little voices.

“No!” Felix shouted rather than answered, and rushed away from the spot like a lunatic.

Once more at home, he shut out everyone and flung himself on his bed, in a state of stupor that weighed him down till night—­a sort of dull torpor of brain, with utter exhaustion of physical strength—­a misery of formless thought.  Towards evening one persistent idea aroused him from this strange lethargy.

“I am a cowardly murderer,” he groaned.  “I wished for my fellow-being’s death.  God punishes me—­I will execute his sentence.”  He stretched out his hand in the dark, groping for a dagger that hung from the wall.  Then a mild brightness filtered through the curtains and irradiated the bed.  Felix distinctly saw the grotesque figure of Mandarin Li standing a few steps away.  The shadow of death darkened his face, and without seeming movement of his lips, Felix heard these words, uttered by that shrill ringing voice so hated, now mellowed into divine music.