her enchantments over me began on that first day, when silence as to
her was imposed upon me against my will. Each time that I have wished
to question you it seemed as though I were about to reveal a secret of
which I ought to be the incorruptible guardian. Whenever I have tried
to speak, a burning seal has been laid upon my lips, and I myself have
become the involuntary minister of these mysteries. You see me here
to-night, for the hundredth time, bruised, defeated, broken, after
leaving the hallucinating sphere which surrounds that young girl, so
gentle, so fragile to both of you, but to me the cruellest of
magicians! Yes, to me she is like a sorcerer holding in her right hand
the invisible wand that moves the globe, and in her left the
thunderbolt that rends asunder all things at her will. No longer can I
look upon her brow; the light of it is insupportable. I skirt the
borders of the abyss of madness too closely to be longer silent. I
must speak. I seize this moment, when courage comes to me, to resist
the power which drags me onward without inquiring whether or not I
have the force to follow. Who is she? Did you know her young? What of
her birth? Had she father and mother, or was she born of the
conjunction of ice and sun? She burns and yet she freeze; she shows
herself and then withdraws; she attracts me and repulses me; she
brings me life, she gives me death; I love her and yet I hate her! I
cannot live thus; let me be wholly in heaven or in hell!"

Holding his refilled pipe in one hand, and in the other the cover
which he forgot to replace, Monsieur Becker listened to Wilfrid with a
mysterious expression on his face, looking occasionally at his
daughter, who seemed to understand the man's language as in harmony
with the strange being who inspired it. Wilfrid was splendid to behold
at this moment,--like Hamlet listening to the ghost of his father as
it rises for him alone in the midst of the living.