were, of that metal with his own substance, became closer and closer,
and age intensified it. His sister herself excited his suspicions,
though she was perhaps more miserly, more rapacious than her brother
whom she actually surpassed in penurious inventions. Their daily
existence had something mysterious and problematical about it. The old
woman rarely took bread from the baker; she appeared so seldom in the
market, that the least credulous of the townspeople ended by
attributing to these strange beings the knowledge of some secret for
the maintenance of life. Those who dabbled in alchemy declared that
Maitre Cornelius had the power of making gold. Men of science averred
that he had found the Universal Panacea. According to many of the
country-people to whom the townsfolk talked of him, Cornelius was a
chimerical being, and many of them came into the town to look at his
house out of mere curiosity.

The young seigneur whom we left in front of that house looked about
him, first at the hotel de Poitiers, the home of his mistress, and
then at the evil house. The moonbeams were creeping round their
angles, and tinting with a mixture of light and shade the hollows and
reliefs of the carvings. The caprices of this white light gave a
sinister expression to both edifices; it seemed as if Nature herself
encouraged the superstitions that hung about the miser's dwelling. The
young man called to mind the many traditions which made Cornelius a
personage both curious and formidable. Though quite decided through
the violence of his love to enter that house, and stay there long
enough to accomplish his design, he hesitated to take the final step,
all the while aware that he should certainly take it. But where is the
man who, in a crisis of his life, does not willingly listen to
presentiments as he hangs above the precipice? A lover worthy of being
loved, the young man feared to die before he had been received for