longer tried to argue with him on the subject. I held my peace whenever he recurred to it, and concealed my tears, which served only to irritate him. He thought that I understood his abominable hints and called my silence inhuman indifference and stupid obstinacy. Several times he struck me savagely and would have killed me if some one had not come to my assistance. It is true that when these paroxysms had passed, he threw himself at my feet and implored me with tears in his eyes to forgive him. But I avoided these scenes of reconciliation so far as I could, for the emotion caused a fresh shock to his nerves and provoked a return of the outbreaks. At last this irritability ceased and gave place to a sort of dull, stupid despair which was even more horrible. He would gaze at me with a gloomy expression, and seemed to nourish a secret aversion for me and projects of revenge. Sometimes I woke in the middle of the night and saw him standing by my bed, his face wearing a sinister expression; at such times I thought that he meant to kill me, and I shrieked with fear. But he would simply shrug his shoulders and return to his bed with a stupid laugh. In spite of everything I loved him still, not as he was, but because of what he had been and might become again. There were times when I had hopes that a blessed revolution was taking place in him, and that he would come forth from that crisis a new man, cleansed of all his evil inclinations. He seemed no longer to think of satisfying them, nor did he express regret or desire for anything whatsoever. I could not imagine the subject of the long meditations by which he seemed to be absorbed. Most of the time his eyes were fixed upon me with such a strange expression that I was afraid of him. I dared not speak to him, but I asked his forgiveness by imploring glances. Then I would imagine that his own glance melted and that his breast rose with an imperceptible sigh; he would turn his head away as if he wished to conceal or stifle his emotion, and would fall to musing again. At such times I flattered myself that he was engaged in making salutary reflections concerning the past, and that he would soon open his heart to tell me that he had conceived a hatred of vice and a love of virtue. My hopes grew fainter when the Marquis de ---- reappeared on the scene. He never entered my apartments, because he knew the horror I had of him; but he would pass under the windows and call Leoni, or come to my door and knock in a peculiar way to let him know that he was there. Then Leoni would go out with him and remain away a long while. One day I saw them pass and repass several times; the Vicomte de Chalm was with them. "Leoni is lost," I thought, "and I too; some fresh crime will soon be committed under my eyes." That evening Leoni came home late; and, as he left his companions at the street door, I heard him say these words: