people; no one was anxious to put him out. Women are prodigiously fond of those persons who call themselves pashas, and who are, as it were accompanied by lions and executioners, and who walk in a panoply of terror. The result, in the case of such men, is a security of action, a certitude of power, a pride of gaze, a leonine consciousness, which makes women realize the type of strength of which they all dream. Such was De Marsay. Happy, for the moment, with his future, he grew young and pliable, and thought of nothing but love as he went to bed. He dreamed of the girl with the golden eyes, as the young and passionate can dream. His dreams were monstrous images, unattainable extravagances--full of light, revealing invisible worlds, yet in a manner always incomplete, for an intervening veil changes the conditions of vision. For the next and succeeding day Henri disappeared and no one knew what had become of him. His power only belonged to him under certain conditions, and, happily for him, during those two days he was a private soldier in the service of the demon to whom he owed his talismanic existence. But at the appointed time, in the evening, he was waiting--and he had not long to wait--for the carriage. The mulatto approached Henri, in order to repeat to him in French a phrase which he seemed to have learned by heart. “If you wish to come, she told me, you must consent to have your eyes bandaged.” And Cristemio produced a white silk handkerchief. “No!” said Henri, whose omnipotence revolted suddenly. He tried to leap in. The mulatto made a sign, and the carriage drove off. “Yes!” cried De Marsay, furious at the thought of losing a piece of good fortune which had been promised him. He saw, moreover, the impossibility of making terms with a slave whose obedience was as blind as the hangman’s. Nor was it this passive instrument upon whom his anger could fall.