"That is the Marquis!" said Dominique. "Ah! now we shall have good sport," cried Dame Madelaine. "My dear woman," said Dominique--this time in a supplicating voice--"spare him; on my word, you shall be paid." "Pshaw! Now we shall see him--this smuggling Marquis." The door was gently opened, and the Marquis appeared. "I have not courage enough to witness this scene," said the trembling Dominique, and he shut himself up in his dark chamber. CHAPTER III THE DEBTOR At sight of the Marquis, Madelaine drew herself up like a fighting-cock, and cast her eyes, flashing with anger, on the young man. The Marquis of Létorière was then about twenty years of age. The portraits we have of him, and the unanimous witness of his contemporaries, agree in representing him as the type of the most seductive ideality. At this age, his proportions of exquisite elegance resembled rather the Grecian god of love than Antinous. All the treasures of antique statuary did not offer, it is said, anything comparable to the harmonious beauty of his form. Under this charming envelope nature had hidden muscles of steel, the courage of a lion, a brilliant wit, a lofty soul, and a generous heart. His enchanting countenance was not of a severe and masculine beauty; but one could imagine nothing more pleasing,--and the pleasing was then wonderfully to the purpose. Great size and herculean strength were then out of place, since coats of mail were no longer worn. A dignified and grave air would have been out of date, when the imposing leonine wigs of the age of Louis XIV. were no longer in fashion. If Létorière wore with such a charming effect rose-powder, laces, ribbons, silk, and precious stones, it was because all his features, all his manners, were endowed with a grace almost feminine, admirably in accordance with the almost effeminate elegance of the costume and ornaments of gentlemen of that period. If he possessed the art of pleasing and seducing in the highest degree, it was because his ravishing countenance could express, by turns, finesse, mockery, haughtiness, audacity, tenderness and melancholy. According to the witnesses of his time, his expression and the tone of his voice had an especial charm, and an irresistible power, which the partisans of a new science would undoubtedly attribute to magnetic attraction. But at the epoch of which we speak, he was only a poor young man, and, _magnetic_ or not, his attraction was put to a severe test by the tailor's wife. Madelaine Landry felt her choler rising at sight of her debtor. Létorière was soaked by the rain; his hands were blue with cold, and his forehead almost hidden by the wet curls of his beautiful chestnut hair, which he then wore without powder. When he saw Madelaine, he could not repress a look of astonishment and chagrin; yet he saluted her politely, and, bending on her his great black eyes, at once so sad and soft, he said, in his brilliant and harmonious voice: