"Alas! what is the matter with you?" she murmured, in a trembling voice. "Is it not enough of suffering?" "No; it is not enough!" cried Rudolph, responding to his own thoughts. "I have never before experienced--never! such a desire for vengeance--a thirst for blood--a calm, reflecting rage! When I did not know that one of the victims of the monster was my own child, I said to myself, the death of this man will be sterile, while his life will be fertile, if, to redeem it, he accept the conditions which I impose. To condemn him to be charitable, to expiate his crimes, appeared to me just; and then, life without gold, life without sensuality, would be for him a long and double torture. But it is my child whom he has delivered to all the horrors of infamy and misery! but it is my daughter whom he has murdered! I will kill this man!" And the prince sprung toward the door. "Where are you going? Do not abandon me!" cried Sarah, half rising, and extending toward Rudolph her supplicating hands. "Do not leave me alone! I am dying!" "Alone! no! no! I leave you with the specter of your daughter, whose death you have caused!" Sarah, frantic, threw herself on her knees, uttering a cry of affright, as if an alarming phantom had appeared to her. "Pity! I die!" "Die, then, accursed!" answered Rudolph, frightful with rage. "Now I must have the life of your accomplice, for it is you who delivered your daughter to her executioner!" And Rudolph ordered his coach to be rapidly driven to the house of Jacques Ferrand. CHAPTER XVI. FURENS AMORIS. Night closed in while Rudolph was on his way to the notary's. The pavilion occupied by Jacques Ferrand was buried in profound obscurity. The wind howled, the rain fell as during that gloomy night when Cecily fled forever from the notary's house. Extended on a bed in his sleeping apartment, feebly lighted by a lamp, Jacques Ferrand was dressed in black trousers and vest; one of the sleeves of his shirt was turned back, and a ligature around his attenuated arm announced that he had just been bled. Polidori was standing near the bed, with one hand on the bolster, and appeared to regard the features of his accomplice with inquietude. Nothing could be more hideously frightful than the face of Ferrand, who was then plunged into that torpor which ordinarily succeeds violent attacks. Of a mortal pallor, strongly relieved by the shadows of the alcove, his face, streaming with a cold sweat, announced the last stage of consumption; his closed eyelids were so swollen and injected with blood, that they appeared like two reddish lobes in the middle of this visage of cadaverous lividity. "One more attack like the last, and all is over," said Polidori, in a low tone, and, retiring from the bed, he commenced walking slowly up and down the room.