He was gone, again nodding a greeting to her at the door with a graceful movement, which she returned with an obedient smile, then sank back, as if shattered, into her seat. "In vain! in vain!" she murmured. "I can never free myself, never. He is a thousand times the stronger, and he knows it only too well! That was the glance of the tiger at the deer that is in his grasp; those were the eyes of the serpent, fixed on the bird in its nest. Lost! lost! his sure prey, his obedient tool; forced to act, to speak, to smile, to breathe as he will! Do I know my lesson? alas for me if I have forgotten one word! He would find it out at once. 'Did you not see that? Why where were your eyes? Did you not hear that? Why, my dearest, it might have been heard with half an ear!' He, ah! he, with whom the demons are in league, whom they all obey with all their might, for whom they smooth his path along which he paces with the proud step of a conqueror driving his victim before him! What else is that Antonio but such a slavish demon, a messenger from hell, who is at hand when he is summoned? Here I am, master; what does my master command? To sow dissension between father and son, between father and daughter, between the lover and the beloved? I have done it already, at least tried to do it; pardon, master, your unskilful servant, who struck too soon with the whip; teach me how to chastise with scorpions; I shall soon learn in your service, I shall become worthy of you! And is there more to be done; to draw from a maiden's heart its tender secret and to give it up to you, that you may taint and defile it, may break and tear it to pieces with your unhallowed, cruel hands? No, that is already cared for; that is best understood by a woman, the well-trained accomplice of your hellish art. It is true she is related to your victim, could, and in the natural course of events ought to, be a second mother to her; so much the better! She will be able the better to creep into her secrets, the finer to spin threads in which the poor bird will flutter. Oh, my God, my God! how boundlessly must I have sinned, that you will not forgive me, that you have so utterly deserted me!"