Then began the terrible life of this miserable wretch. Enclosed in the impenetrable solitude of this house, inaccessible to all, more and more under the galling yoke of his mad love, careless of penetrating the secret of this singular woman; from a master he was made a slave,--he was Cecily's valet, served her at meal-times, and took care of her apartment. Forewarned by the baron that Louise had been overcome by a narcotic, the creole drank only pure water, eating only of dishes with which it was impossible to tamper. She had selected the apartment she was to occupy, assuring herself that there was there no concealed entrance. Besides, Jacques Ferrand soon discovered that Cecily was not a woman whom he could assail with impunity; she was vigorous, agile, and dangerously armed; thus a frenzied delirium alone could have incited him to attempt force, and she was quite protected from this peril. Yet, that she might not weary and utterly repulse the notary's passion, the creole seemed sometimes touched by his assiduities, and flattered by the control which she exercised over him. And, perceiving that he hoped, by dint of proofs of devotion and self-denial, he should contrive to make her overlook his age and ugliness, she amused herself with telling him that, if she ever could love him, how excessive that love would be. With this Jacques Ferrand's reason wandered, and he would frequently walk in his garden at night absorbed in his own reflections. Sometimes he gazed for hours into the bedroom of the creole; for she had allowed a small window to be made in the door, which she frequently and intentionally left open. Absorbed, lost, wandering, indifferent to his most important interests, or the preservation of his reputation as an austere, serious, and pious man,--a reputation usurped, it is true, but, at the same time, acquired after long years of dissimulation and chicanery,--he amazed his clerks by his aberration of mind, offended his clients by his refusals to receive them, and abruptly refused the visits of the priests, who, deceived by his hypocrisy, had been until then his warmest champions.