The pale features of the priest expressed at once a gentle melancholy combined with an air of intelligence and venerable serenity. A small black cap covered the crown of his head, while his long gray locks hung down over the collar of his greatcoat. Let us merely add to this hasty sketch, that owing to the worthy priest's implicit confidence in the words and actions of others, he was, and ever had been, completely blinded by the deep and well-practised hypocrisy of Jacques Ferrand. "Is your worthy employer in his room, my children?" inquired the cure. "Yes, M. l'Abbe, he is," answered Chalamel, as, rising respectfully, he opened the door of an adjoining study, and waited for the priest to enter. Hearing loud voices in the apartment, and unwilling to overhear words not intended for his ears, the abbe walked rapidly forwards, and tapped briskly at the door. "Come in," said a voice with a strong Italian accent; and, entering, the priest found himself in the presence of Polidori and Jacques Ferrand. The clerks did not appear to have erred in calculating upon the approaching end of their employer. He was, indeed, scarcely to be recognised. Spite of the almost spectral thinness and pallor of his sharpened features, a deep red fever-spot burned and scorched upon his projecting cheek-bones; a sort of incessant tremor, amounting occasionally to convulsive spasms and starts, shook his attenuated frame. His coarse but wasted hands seemed parched with feverish heat, while his bloodshot eyes were shrouded from view by the large green glasses he wore. Altogether his face was a fearful index of the internal ravages of a fast consuming disease. The physiognomy of Polidori offered a strong contrast to that of the notary. Nothing could express a more bitter irony, a more biting contempt, than the features of this hardened villain, surrounded as they were by a mass of red hair, slightly mingled with gray, hanging in wild disorder over his pale, wrinkled brow, and partially hiding his sharp, penetrating eyes, which, green and transparent as the stone known as the _aqua marine_, were placed very close to his hooked nose, and imparted a still more sinister character to the look of sarcastic malevolence that dwelt on his thin, compressed lips. Such was Polidori, as, attired in a suit of entire black, he sat beside the desk of Jacques Ferrand. At the sight of the priest both rose. "And how do you find yourself, my good M. Ferrand?" inquired the abbe, in a tone of deep solicitude; "let me hope you are better." "Much the same as you last saw me, M. l'Abbe," replied the notary. "No sleep, no rest, and constantly devoured by fever; but God's will be done!" "Alas, M. l'Abbe!" interposed Polidori, "my poor friend is no better; but what a blessed spirit he is in! What resignation! Finding no other relief from his suffering than in doing good!"