At this moment the giant snake, thus charmed, reared himself aloft on his cold rings, with darting tongue, to spring and to coil; "_Mon cœur_," said the snake, who always in passion spoke French, "_vole sur cette bouche qui enchante tous les sens_." "Mother!" cried she, "Caroline! O God, let me see, O God--my eyes!" Then did the All-gracious give them back to her once more; the agony of nature, the noisy preparations for the burial, opened again the eye of the tranced victim. How eagerly she flew out of the chamber of torture! The disappointed, mortified beast of prey was still reckoning on blindness and distraction. But when Bouverot saw that she ran lightly up the stairway to the Italian roof, then he merely sent the maid, who came running in, after her, to see that she received no injury; and now again he held her previous blindness for dissimulation. He himself took from the chamber the miniature sketch, and dragged himself like a hungry, wounded monster sullenly and slowly out of the house. TWENTIETH JUBILEE. Gaspard's Letter.--Partings. 86. CYCLE. "She can see again," cried Charles to the Count the morning after, in the intoxication of joy, without concerning himself at all about the cold relations of the recent period; and was entirely his old self. His enmity was more frail and fleeting than his love, for the former dwelt, in his case, on the ice, which soon melted and ran away, the latter upon the fluid element, on which he always sailed. Coloring, Albano asked who had been the ophthalmist. "A well-meant fright," said he; "the German gentleman made as if he would paint her, when my parents, according to appointment, were not there,--or he really painted her,--at this moment I have but a confused idea of the whole,--all at once she heard a strange man's voice, and terror and fright worked naturally like electric shocks!" Although the Captain heard, down on the bottom of his billowy sea, all voices only confusedly, nevertheless he had this time heard correctly; for Liana had extorted from her mother the concealment of the martyrology, in order to take away from her brother the occasion of proving his love to her by a duel with her adversary. Albano laid up many questions about the dark history in his breast; and broke off the conversation by a description of his journey.