having him arrested. A warrant was out against him: Exili was taken up,
and was lodged in the Bastille. He had been there about six months when
Sainte-Croix was brought to the same place. The prisoners were numerous
just then, so the governor had his new guest put up in the same room as
the old one, mating Exili and Sainte-Croix, not knowing that they were a
pair of demons. Our readers now understand the rest. Sainte-Croix was
put into an unlighted room by the gaoler, and in the dark had failed to
see his companion: he had abandoned himself to his rage, his imprecations
had revealed his state of mind to Exili, who at once seized the occasion
for gaining a devoted and powerful disciple, who once out of prison might
open the doors for him, perhaps, or at least avenge his fate should he be
incarcerated for life.

The repugnance felt by Sainte-Croix for his fellow-prisoner did not last
long, and the clever master found his pupil apt. Sainte-Croix, a strange
mixture of qualities good and evil, had reached the supreme crisis of his
life, when the powers of darkness or of light were to prevail. Maybe, if
he had met some angelic soul at this point, he would have been led to
God; he encountered a demon, who conducted him to Satan.

Exili was no vulgar poisoner: he was a great artist in poisons,
comparable with the Medici or the Borgias. For him murder was a fine
art, and he had reduced it to fixed and rigid rules: he had arrived at a
point when he was guided not by his personal interest but by a taste for
experiment. God has reserved the act of creation for Himself, but has
suffered destruction to be within the scope of man: man therefore
supposes that in destroying life he is God's equal. Such was the nature
of Exili's pride: he was the dark, pale alchemist of death: others might
seek the mighty secret of life, but he had found the secret of
destruction.