At other times, during whole hours, he looked into the chamber where the
Creole slept, for she had had the infernal kindness to allow a wicket to be
placed in her door, which she often opened, in order that she might almost
cause him to lose his reason, so that she could then execute the orders she
had received.

The decisive moment seemed to approach. The chastisement of Ferrand became
from day to day more worthy of his sins.

He suffered all the torments. By turns absorbed, lost, out of his mind,
indifferent to his most serious interests, the maintenance of his
reputation as an austere, grave, and pious man--a reputation usurped, but
acquired by long years of dissimulation and cunning--he astonished his
clerks by his aberrations, displeased his clients by his refusal to see
them, and harshly kept at a distance the priests, who, deceived by his
hypocrisy, had been, until then, his most fervent trumpeters.

As we were saying, Cecily was arranging her head for the night before a
glass. On a slight noise coming from the corridor, she turned her face away
from the door.

Notwithstanding the noise which she had just heard at the door, Cecily did
not the less tranquilly continue her undressing; she drew from her corsage,
where it was placed like a busk, a dirk, five or six inches long, in a case
of black shagreen, with a handle of black ebony fastened with silver, a
very simple handle, but perfectly _handy_, not a weapon of mere display.

Cecily took the dirk from its case with excessive precaution, and placed it
on the marble chimney-piece; the blade, of the finest Damascus and the best