hair stand on end, and a cold sweat began to stream down his face as the
strange fantastic being step by step approached him. At length the
apparition paused, the prisoner and he stood face to face for a moment,
their eyes riveted; then the mysterious stranger spoke in gloomy tones.

"Young man," said he, "you have prayed to the devil for vengeance on the
men who have taken you, for help against the God who has abandoned you.
I have the means, and I am here to proffer it. Have you the courage to
accept?"

"First of all," asked Sainte-Croix; "who are you?"

"Why seek you to know who I am," replied the unknown, "at the very moment
when I come at your call, and bring what you desire?"

"All the same," said Sainte-Croix, still attributing what he heard to a
supernatural being, "when one makes a compact of this kind, one prefers
to know with whom one is treating."

"Well, since you must know," said the stranger, "I am the Italian Exili."

Sainte-Croix shuddered anew, passing from a supernatural vision to a
horrible reality. The name he had just heard had a terrible notoriety at
the time, not only in France but in Italy as well. Exili had been driven
out of Rome, charged with many poisonings, which, however, could not be
satisfactorily brought home to him. He had gone to Paris, and there, as
in his native country, he had drawn the eyes of the authorities upon
himself; but neither in Paris nor in Rome was he, the pupil of Rene and
of Trophana, convicted of guilt. All the same, though proof was wanting,
his enormities were so well accredited that there was no scruple as to