“And Rancey?” said he, at last, in an agitated voice, whilst he wiped the cold sweat from his brow.

“After two days of furious delirium,” resumed Rodin, “he renounced the world, and shut himself up in impenetrable solitude.  The first period of his retreat was frightful; in his despair, he uttered loud yells of grief and rage, that were audible at some distance.  Twice he attempted suicide, to escape from the terrible visions.”

“He had visions, then?” said Hardy, with an increased agony of curiosity.

“Yes,” replied Rodin, in a solemn tone, “he had fearful visions.  He saw the girl, who, for his sake, had died in mortal sin, plunged in the heat of the everlasting flames of hell!  On that fair face, disfigured by infernal tortures, was stamped the despairing laugh of the damned!  Her teeth gnashed with pain; her arms writhed in anguish!  She wept tears of blood, and, with an agonized and avenging voice, she cried to her seducer:  ’Thou art the cause of my perdition—­my curse, my curse be upon thee!’”

As he pronounced these last words, Rodin advanced three steps nearer to Hardy, accompanying each step with a menacing gesture.  If we remember the state of weakness, trouble, and fear, in which M. Hardy was—­if we remember that the Jesuit had just roused in the soul of this unfortunate man all the sensual and spiritual memories of a love, cooled, but not extinguished, in tears—­if we remember, too, that Hardy reproached himself with the seduction of a beloved object, whom her departure from her duties might (according to the Catholic faith) doom to everlasting flames—­we shall not wonder at the terrible effect of this phantasmagoria, conjured up in silence and solitude, in the evening dusk, by this fearful priest.

The effect on Hardy was indeed striking, and the more dangerous, that the Jesuit, with diabolical craft, seemed only to be carrying out, from another point of view, the ideas of Gabriel.  Had not the young priest convinced Hardy that nothing is sweeter, than to ask of heaven forgiveness for those who have sinned, or whom we have led astray?  But forgiveness implies punishment; and it was to the punishment alone that Rodin drew the attention of his victim, by painting it in these terrible hues.  With hands clasped together, and eye fixed and dilated, Hardy trembled in all his limbs, and seemed still listening to Rodin, though the latter had ceased to speak.  Mechanically, he repeated:  “My curse, my curse be upon thee?”

Then suddenly he exclaimed, in a kind of frenzy:  “The curse is on me also!  The woman, whom I taught to forget her sacred duties, and to commit mortal sin—­one day plunged in the everlasting flames—­her arms writhing in agony—­weeping tears of blood—­will cry to me from the bottomless pit:  ’My curse, my curse be upon thee!’—­One day,” he added, with redoubled terror, “one day?—­who knows? perhaps at this moment!—­for if the sea voyage had been fatal to her—­if a shipwreck—­oh, God! she too would have died in mortal sin—­lost, lost, forever!—­Oh, have mercy on her, my God!  Crush me in Thy wrath—­but have mercy on her—­for I alone am guilty!”