“_Mon Dieu!_” he cried out in his bitterness, “why didst thou give me the heart of a man and the body of a toad?” He had had black hours before when he was well-nigh ready to curse God and die, but never a worse moment than this. The devil was contending for the soul of le Bossu, and the darkness fell, and it seemed as if that road might lead to hell. And what was he, after all? he thought; a peasant, a shoemaker, a hunchback! But, oh, _mon Dieu!_ the long, long years of desolation, the anguish, the hunger for one word of love, of kindness, of sympathy. What evil spirit had led him to lie down in that old windmill? had let him sleep there until her voice awoke him, and out of purgatory he had looked into paradise? Like Dives, he had cried out for a drop of water to slake his thirst, and yet he still lay in the fires of Satan. Early that day he had set out for St. Césaire, and he had done his work in the village, and before sunset he went up the stream to the old mill and rested, thinking of mademoiselle in the château, thankful that she was sheltered and safe. Sleep had come to the weary cobbler, and when he awoke Rosaline and her lover were talking at the door of the mill. He had heard all, lying there almost in a stupor and he had remained quiet. It was too late to warn them of a listener, and was it not best that she should be ignorant of it? He had heard all; their love for each other, their talk of their religion, their hopes and their fears. He was no longer in doubt of the nature of the dangers that surrounded them, and he possessed a secret that it was a crime to conceal; that the State and the Church had ordered every good Catholic to reveal; and if he revealed it, the lovers would be separated forever, and he would have no cause to think of their happiness with such a pang of miserable jealousy. The poor hunchbacked cobbler held their lives in his hand, their joy, and their desolation. All these thoughts and many more crowded in upon le Bossu as he toiled along the road, and it seemed to him that Satan walked beside him. When a bodily infirmity as great as his is laid upon a man, there come hours of supreme temptation, when human nature revolts and the starved heart cries out in agony and will not be satisfied. Must one man suffer so, and yet rejoice to see others happy? A soul is strong indeed that rises out of such misery clean.