She was once the slave of a Louisiana planter, who designed her for his
harem. Her lover, a slave named David, resisted that design to the only
gain of being flogged, while his loved one was borne away. David was no
common black; he had been educated in France, and was the plantation
surgeon. The story of this high-handed and twofold outrage reached Rudolph,
whose yacht was on the coast. The prince, landing in the night with a
boat's crew, carried off David and Cecily from the planter's calaboose,
leaving a sum of money as indemnity. The two were wedded in France, but
Cecily, won away by a very bad man, had become so evil, that her new life
was a series of scandals. David would have killed her, but Rudolph, whose
physician he had worthily become, induced him to prefer her life-prisonment
in Germany. Out of her dungeon she was brought by Rudolph, who knew no
fitter implement with which to chastise the notary.

Her detestable predilections, for some time restrained by her real
attachment for David, were only developed in Europe; the civilization and
climatical influence of the North had tempered the violence, modified the
expression. Instead of casting herself violently on her prey, and thinking
only, like her compeers, to destroy as soon as possible their life and
fortune, Cecily, fixing on her victims her magnetic glances, commenced by
attracting them, little by little, into the blazing whirlwind which seemed
to emanate from her; then, seeing them lost, suffering every torment of a
tantalized craving, she amused herself by a refinement of coquetry,
prolonging their delirium; then, returning to her first instincts, she
destroyed them in her homicidal embrace. This was more horrible still.

The famished tiger, who springs upon and carries off the prey which he
tears with wild roars, inspires less horror than the serpent, which
silently charms, attracts by degrees, twists in inextricable folds the
victim, feels it palpitate under its deadly stings, and seems to feed upon