The girl let Phœbus work his will. She seemed unconscious of what he was doing. The captain’s eyes gleamed. Suddenly she turned to him. “Phœbus,” she said with a look of boundless love, “teach me your religion.”

“My religion!” exclaimed the captain with a guffaw. “Teach you my religion! Thunder and lightning! what do you want with my religion?”

“That we may be married,” answered she.

A mingled look of surprise, disdain, unconcern, and licentious passion swept over the captain’s face. “Ah, bah!” said he, “who talks of marriage?”

The gipsy turned pale, and let her head droop sadly on her breast.

“Sweetheart,” went on Phœbus fondly, “what matters such foolery as marriage? Shall we be any less loving for not having gabbled some Latin in a priest’s shop?”

And as he said this in his most insinuating tones, he drew still closer to the gipsy; his caressing arms had resumed their clasp about that slender, pliant waist; his eye kindled more and more, and everything proclaimed that Captain Phœbus was obviously approaching one of those moments at which Jupiter himself behaves so foolishly that worthy old Homer is obliged to draw a cloud over the scene.

Dom Claude, however, saw everything. The door was merely of worm-eaten old puncheon ribs, and left between them ample passage for his vulture gaze. This dark-skinned, broad-shouldered priest, condemned hitherto to the austere chastity of the cloister, shivered and burned alternately at this night-scene of love and passion. The sight of this lovely, dishevelled girl in the arms of a young and ardent lover turned the blood in his veins to molten lead. He felt an extraordinary commotion within him; his eye penetrated with lascivious jealousy under all these unfastened clasps and laces. Any one seeing the wretched man’s countenance pressed close against the worm-eaten bars would have taken it for the face of a tiger looking through his cage at some jackal devouring a gazelle.

By a sudden, rapid movement Phœbus snatched the gipsy’s kerchief completely off her neck. The poor girl, who had sat pale and dreamy, started from her reverie. She brusquely tore herself away from the too enterprising young officer, and catching sight of her bare neck and shoulders, blushing, confused, and mute with shame, she crossed her beautiful arms over her bosom to hide it. But for the flame that burned in her cheeks, to see her thus standing, silent and motionless, with drooping eyes, you would have taken her for a statue of Modesty.

But this action of the captain’s had laid bare the mysterious amulet which she wore round her neck.

“What is that?” he asked, seizing this pretext for once more approaching the beautiful creature he had frightened away.

“Do not touch it,” she answered quickly, “it is my protection.

Through it I shall find my parents again if I remain worthy of that. Oh, leave me, Monsieur le Capitaine! Mother! my poor mother! where art thou? Come to my aid! Have pity, Monsieur Phœbus— give me back my kerchief to cover my bosom.”

But Phœbus drew back coldly. “Ah, mademoiselle,” he said, “I see very plainly that you do not love me!”

“Not love him!” cried the poor unhappy child, clinging wildly to him and drawing him down to the seat beside her. “I do not love thee, my Phœbus? What words are these, cruel, to rend my heart! Oh, come— take me! take all! do with me what thou wilt! I am thine. What matters the amulet! What is my mother to me now! Thou art father and mother to me now, since I love thee! Phœbus, beloved, look at me— see, ’tis I— ’tis that poor little one whom thou wilt not spurn from thee, and who comes, who comes