But the roaring of the thunder dies away, the rain begins to fall heavily, danger vanishes, and I feel my courage reviving.  Such is man! or at all events, such was I at that moment.  It was raining so fast that, if it had continued pouring with the same violence for a quarter of an hour, the country would have been inundated.  As soon as the rain had ceased, the wind abated, the clouds were dispersed, and the moon shone in all its splendour, like silver in the pure, blue sky.  I take up my magic ring, and telling the two friends to retire to their beds without speaking to me, I hurry to my room.  I still felt rather shaken, and, casting my eyes on Javotte, I thought her so pretty that I felt positively frightened.  I allowed her to dry me, and after that necessary operation I told her piteously to go to bed.  The next morning she told me that, when she saw me come in, shaking all over in spite of the heat, she had herself shuddered with fear.

After eight hours of sound sleep I felt all right, but I had had enough of the comedy, and to my great surprise the sight of Genevieve did not move me in any way.  The obedient Javotte had certainly not changed, but I was not the same.  I was for the first time in my life reduced to a state of apathy, and in consequence of the superstitious ideas which had crowded in my mind the previous night I imagined that the innocence of that young girl was under the special protection of Heaven, and that if I had dared to rob her of her virginity the most rapid and terrible death would have been my punishment.

At all events, thanks to my youth and my exalted ideas, I fancied that through my self-denying resolutions the father would not be so great a dupe, and the daughter not so unhappy, unless the result should prove as unfortunate for her as it had been for poor Lucy, of Pasean.

The moment that Javotte became in my eyes an object of holy horror, my departure was decided.  The resolution was all the more irrevocable because I fancied some old peasant might have witnessed all my tricks in the middle of the magic ring, in which case the most Holy, or, if you like, the most infernal, Inquisition, receiving information from him, might very well have caught me and enhanced my fame by some splendid ‘auto-da-fe’ in which I had not the slightest wish to be the principal actor.  It struck me as so entirely within the limits of probability that I sent at once for Franzia and Capitani, and in the presence of the unpolluted virgin I told them that I had obtained from the seven spirits watching over the treasure all the necessary particulars, but that I had been compelled to enter into an agreement with them to delay the extraction of the treasure placed under their guardianship.  I told Franzia that I would hand to him in writing all the information which I had compelled the spirits to give me.  I produced, in reality, a few minutes afterwards, a document similar to the one I had concocted at the