“An error!” said M. Baleinier, in a grave and sorrowful tone.  “Let me speak to you in the name of that skill and experience, which you are pleased to ascribe to me.  Hear me but for a moment, my dear child; and then I will appeal to yourself.”

“To me!” replied the young girl, in a kind of stupor; “you wish to persuade me, that—­” Then, interrupting herself, she added, with a convulsive laugh:  “This only is wanting to your triumph—­to bring me to confess that I am mad—­that my proper place is here—­that I owe you—­”

“Gratitude.  Yes, you do owe it me, even as I told you at the commencement of this conversation.  Listen to me then; my words may be cruel, but there are wounds which can only be cured with steel and fire.  I conjure you, my dear child—­reflect—­throw back one impartial glance at your past life—­weigh your own thoughts—­and you will be afraid of yourself.  Remember those moments of strange excitement, during which, as you have told me, you seemed to soar above the earth—­and, above all, while it is yet time—­while you preserve enough clearness of mind to compare and judge—­compare, I entreat, your manner of living with that of other ladies of your age?  Is there a single one who acts as you act? who thinks as you think? unless, indeed, you imagine yourself so superior to other women, that, in virtue of that supremacy, you can justify a life and habits that have no parallel in the world.”

“I have never had such stupid pride, you know it well,” said Adrienne, looking at the doctor with growing terror.

“Then, my dear child, to what are we to attribute your strange and inexplicable mode of life?  Can you even persuade yourself that it is founded on reason?  Oh, my child! take care?—­As yet, you only indulge in charming originalities of conduct, poetical eccentricities, sweet and vague reveries—­but the tendency is fatal, the downward course irresistible.  Take care, take care!—­the healthful, graceful, spiritual portion of your intelligence has yet the upper hand, and imprints its stamp upon all your extravagances; but you do not know, believe me, with what frightful force the insane portion of the mind, at a given moment, develops itself and strangles up the rest.  Then we have no longer graceful eccentricities, like yours, but ridiculous, sordid, hideous delusions.”

“Oh! you frighten me,” said the unfortunate girl, as she passed her trembling hands across her burning brow.

“Then,” continued M. Baleinier, in an agitated voice, “then the last rays of intelligence are extinguished; then madness—­for we must pronounce the dreaded word—­gets the upper hand, and displays itself in furious and savage transports.”

“Like the woman upstairs,” murmured Adrienne, as, with fixed and eager look, she raised her finger towards the ceiling.

“Sometimes,” continued the doctor, alarmed himself at the terrible consequences of his own words, but yielding to the inexorable fatality of his situation, “sometimes madness takes a stupid and brutal form; the unfortunate creature, who is attacked by it, preserves nothing human but the shape—­has only the instincts of the lower animals—­eats with voracity, and moves ever backwards and forwards in the cell, in which such a being is obliged to be confined.  That is all its life—­all.”