"Your wound is mortal. It is the poisoned dagger of Cecily which has stabbed you; I always carried it about me; await the effects of the poison. Ah! you loosen your grasp; you are going to die. You should not have hindered me from going to find Cecily," added Jacques Ferrand, feeling in the dark for the door. "Oh!" murmured Polidori, "my arm stiffens--a mortal coldness seizes me--my knees tremble under me--my blood thickens in my veins--my head turns. Help!" cried the accomplice of Ferrand, collecting all his strength for a last cry; "help! I die!" And he sunk under his own weight upon the floor. The crash of a glass door, opened with so much violence that several panes were broken to pieces, the ringing voice of Rudolph, and a noise of hasty footsteps, seemed to respond to Polidori's cry of anguish. Jacques Ferrand, having at length found the lock in the dark, opened the door leading into an adjoining apartment, and rushed into it, his dangerous weapon in his hand. At the same moment, threatening and formidable as the genius of vengeance, the prince entered the room from the opposite side. "Monster!" cried Rudolph, advancing toward Jacques Ferrand, "it is my daughter whom you have killed! You are going--" The prince did not finish; he recoiled alarmed. One would have said that his words had pierced Jacques Ferrand. Throwing his poniard aside, and placing both his hands before his eyes, the wretch fell with his face to the floor, uttering a howl that was anything but human. In consequence of the phenomenon of which we have spoken, of which a profound darkness had suspended the action, when Jacques Ferrand entered this chamber brilliantly lighted, he was struck with a vertigo, similar to that which we have already described, more intolerable than if he had been exposed to a torrent of light as incandescent as that of the disk of the sun. And the agony of this man was a fearful spectacle; he writhed in frightful convulsions, tearing the floor with his nails, as if he wished to dig a hole to escape from the horrible tortures caused by this glaring light. Rudolph, one of his servants, and the porter of the house, who had been compelled to conduct the prince to this apartment, were transfixed with horror. Notwithstanding his just horror, Rudolph felt an emotion of pity for the unheard-of suffering of Jacques Ferrand; he ordered him to be laid on a sofa. This was not done without difficulty; for, fearing to be submitted again to the direct action of the light, the notary struggled violently, but when it streamed in his face he uttered another yell, which filled Rudolph with terror. After protracted torments, these attacks ceased, exhausted by their own violence. Arrived at the mortal period of his delirium, he remembered still the words of Cecily, who had called him her tiger; by degrees, his mind again wandered; he imagined himself a tiger! Crouched in one of the corners of the room, as in his den, his