"May Old Harry run away with me, if I understand a single word of what you are singing there. Ah, ah! is it that you are decidedly losing your noddle? I shall begin to think that you are absent-minded--the fault of that beggarly Cabrion! Since his games of the other day, I don't know you; you look struck all of a heap. That being will be always your nightmare." Hardly had Anastasia pronounced the words than a strange thing came to pass. Alfred remained sitting, his face turned toward the bed. The lodge was lighted by the sickly light of a winter's day, and by a lamp. At the moment his wife pronounced the name Cabrion, Pipelet thought he saw in the shade of the alcove the immovable, cunning face of the painter. It was he, his pointed hat, long hair, thin face, satanic smile, queer beard, and paralyzing gaze. For a moment, Pipelet thought himself in a dream; he passed his hand over his eyes, believing that he was the victim of an illusion. It was not an illusion. Nothing could be more real than this apparition. Frightful thing! nobody could be seen, but only a head, of which the living flesh stood out in bold relief from the obscurity of the alcove. At this sight Pipelet fell over backward, without saying a word; he raised his right arm toward the bed, and pointed at this terrible vision, with a gesture so alarming, that Mrs. Pipelet turned to seek the cause of an alarm of which she soon partook, in spite of her habitual courage. She recoiled two steps, seized with force the hand of Alfred, and cried, "Cabrion!" "Yes," murmured Pipelet, in a hollow voice, almost extinct, shutting his eyes. The stupor of the pair paid the greatest honor to the talent of the artist who had so admirably painted on the pasteboard the features of Cabrion. Her first surprise over, Anastasia, as bold as a lion, ran to the bed, got on it, and tore the picture from the wall. The amazon crowned this valiant enterprise by shouting, as a war-cry, her favorite exclamation, "Go ahead!" Alfred, with his eyes closed, his hands stretched forth, remained immovable, as he had always been accustomed to do in the critical moments of his life. The convulsive oscillations of his hat alone revealed, from time to time, the continued violence of his interior emotions. "Open your eyes, old darling," said Mrs. Pipelet, triumphantly; "it's nothing! it's a picture; the portrait of that scoundrel Cabrion! Look, see how I stamp upon him!" and Anastasia, in her indignation, threw the picture on the ground, and trampled it under her feet, crying, "That's the way I would like to treat his flesh and bones, the wretch!" then picking it up, "see!" said she, "now it has my marks; look now!" Alfred shook his head negatively, without saying a word, and making a sign to his wife to take away the detested picture.