with horror and his tense gaze seemed still to speak. It was a father
rising in wrath from his sepulchre to demand vengeance of God.

"There, the good man is done for!" exclaimed Don Juan.

Intent upon taking the magic crystal to the light of the lamp, as a
drinker examines his bottle at the end of a repast, he had not seen his
father's eye pale. The cowering dog looked alternately at his dead master
and at the elixir, as Don Juan regarded by turns his father and the phial.
The lamp threw out fitful waves of light. The silence was profound, the
viol was mute. Belvidéro thought he saw his father move, and he trembled.
Frightened by the tense expression of the accusing eyes, he closed them,
just as he would have pushed down a window-blind on an autumn night. He
stood motionless, lost in a world of thought.

Suddenly a sharp creak, like that of a rusty spring, broke the silence.
Don Juan, in his surprise, almost dropped the flask. A perspiration,
colder than the steel of a dagger, oozed out from his pores. A cock of
painted wood came forth from a clock and crowed three times. It was one of
those ingenious inventions by which the savants of that time were awakened
at the hour fixed for their work. Already the daybreak reddened the
casement. The old timepiece was more faithful in its master's service than
Don Juan had been in his duty to Bartholomeo. This instrument was composed
of wood, pulleys, cords and wheels, while he had that mechanism peculiar
to man, called a heart.

In order to run no further risk of losing the mysterious liquid the
skeptical Don Juan replaced it in the drawer of the little Gothic table.
At this solemn moment he heard a tumult in the corridor. There were
confused voices, stifled laughter, light footsteps, the rustle of silk, in