strings of their own dominant passions."
"Yes, I know that in this I serve your purpose."
"It is not all. Your eyes read the sealed book of the future. You, sweet dove, pure and guideless, you have taught me what I could not ascertain in twenty years' application. You enlighten my steps, before which my enemies multiply traps and snares; on my mind depend my life, fortune and liberty—you dilate it like the lynx's eye which sees in the dark. As your lovely orbs close on this world, they open in superhuman clarity. They watch for me. It is you who make me rich, free and powerful."
"And in return, you make me unhappy," replied Lorenza, wrapped up in her frenzy.
More fiery than ever, she enfolded him in her arms, so that he was impregnated with a flame which he feebly resisted. But he made such an effort that he broke the living bondage.
"Have pity, Lorenza!" he sued.
"Was it to pity you that I left my native land, my name, my family, my faith!" she said, almost threatening with her lovely arms, rising white and yet muscular amid the waves of her long black tresses coming down. "Why have you laid on me this absolute empire, so that if I am your slave and have to give you my life and breath? Was it to mock me ever with the name of the virgin Lorenza?"
Balsamo sighed, himself crushed by the weight of her immense despair.
"Alas, is it your fault, or that of the Creator. Why were you made the angel with the infallible gaze, by whose aid I should make the universe submit? Why is it that you are the one to read a soul through its bodily envelope as one may read a book through a glass! Because you are an angel of purity, Lorenza, and nothing throws a shadow upon your soul. In your radiant and immaculate bosom the divine spark may be enshrined, a place without sullying where it may fitly nestle. You are a seer because you are blameless, Lorenza; as a woman, you would be but so much substance."
"And you prefer this to my love," continued the Italian, clapping her hands with such rage that they became impurpled; "you set my love beneath these whims that you pursue and fables that you invent? You snatch me out of the cold cloister, but, in the bustling, ardent world you condemn me to the conventional chastity? Joseph, you commit a crime, I tell you."
"Do not blaspheme," said Balsamo, "for I suffer, too. Read in my heart, and never again say that I love you not. I resist you because I want to raise you on the throne of the world."
"Ugh, your ambition!" sneered the young Roman; "will your ambition ever give you what you might have in my love?"
He yielded to her and his head rested in her arms.
"Ah, yes," she cried, "I see at last that you love me more than your ambition, than power, than your aspiration! Oh, you love me as I love you!"
But at the touch of their lips, reason came to him who would be master of Europe. With his hands he beat aside the air charged with magnetic vapor.
"Lorenza, awake, I bid you!"
Thereupon the chain which he could not break was relaxed, and the opening arms were dropped, while the kiss died away on the paling lips of Lorenza, languishing in her last sigh. Her closed eyes parted their lids; the dilated pupils resumed their normal size. She shook herself with an effort, and sank in lassitude, but awake, on the sofa.
Seated three paces from her, the mesmerist sighed deeply.
"Good-bye to the dream!" he said; "good-bye to happiness!"
Chapter XXXVIII.
The Wakeful State.
As soon as Lorenza's sight had recovered its power, she glanced rapidly around her. After examining everything without one of the many knick-knacks which delight woman brightening her brow, she stopped with her look upon Balsamo, and nervously shuddered.
"You again?" she said, receding.
On her physiognomy appeared all the tokens of alarm; her lips became white and perspiration came as pearls at the root of her hair.
"Where am I?" she asked as he said nothing.
"As you know where you came from, you can readily guess where you are," he responded.
"You are right in reminding me; I do, indeed, remember. I know that I have been pursued by you, and torn from the arms of the royal intermediary whom I chose between heaven and you."
"Then you ought to know that this princess has been unable to defend you, however powerful she may be."
"You have overruled her by some witching violence," said Lorenza, wringing her hands, "Oh, saints of mercy, deliver me from this demon!"
"Where do you see anything demoniacal in me," returned Balsamo, shrugging his shoulders. "Once for all I beg you to lay aside this pack of puerile beliefs brought from Rome, and all the rubbish of absurd superstitions which you have carted about with you since you ran away from the nunnery."
"Oh, my dear nunnery—who will restore me to my dear nunnery?" cried the Italian, bursting into tears.
"Indeed, a nunnery is much to be deplored," said Balsamo.
Lorenza ran to one of the windows, opened the curtains and then the sash, but came against iron bars, which were there unmistakably—however many flowers were masking them.
"If I must live in a prison," she said, "I prefer that whence one goes to heaven to that which has a trap door into hades." And she began trying the bars with her dainty hands.
"Were you more reasonable, Lorenza, you would find only flowers at your window, and not bars."
"Was I not reasonable when you confined me in that other prison, the one on wheels, with the vampire you call Althotas? But still you kept your eye on me when by, and never left me till you had breathed into me that spirit which possesses me and I cannot shake it off. Where is that horrid old man who frightens me to death? In some corner, I suppose. Let us hush and listen till his ghostly voice be heard."
"You let your fancy sway you, like a child," said Balsamo. "My friend and preceptor, Althotas, my second father, is an inoffensive old man who has never seen you, let alone approached you, or if he did come near, he would not heed you, being absorbed in his work."
"His work—tell me what the work is!" muttered the Roman.
"He is seeking the elixir of long life, for which superior minds have been seeking these two thousand years."
"What are you working for?"
"Human perfection."
"A pair of demons!" said Lorenza, lifting her hands to heaven.
"Is this your fit coming on again? You are ignorant of one thing: your life is divided into two parts. During one, you are gentle, good and sensible: during the other, you are mad."
"And you shut me up under the vain pretext of this malady."
"It had to be done."
"Oh,
