"Alas, with more evil than I liked," said Fenix, "for I have no personal hate to men, and less to women. My misfortune was that I was compelled to tell your august niece the truth she craved."
"A piece of truthfulness which caused her to faint."
"Is it fault of mine," retorted the mesmerist, in that voice which he could sometimes make thunderous, "that truth is so awful as to produce such effects? Did I seek out the princess, and beg to be presented to her? No, I was avoiding her, when they almost dragged me before her, and she ordered me to answer her interrogation."
"But what was the dreadful truth you told her, my lord?" inquired the princess.
"She saw it in the gap which I tore in the veil over the future," rejoined the mysterious man. "That future which has appeared so awful to your royal highness that you have fled into a cloister to wrestle against it at the altar with tears and prayers. Is it fault of mine, I say, if this future, revealed to you as a holy woman, should be shown to me as a precursor; and if the dauphiness, alarmed at the fate personally threatening her, swooned when it loomed upon her?"
"Do you hear this?" said the cardinal.
me!" moaned the Carmelite superior.
"For her reign is doomed as the most fatal and unfortunate of the entire monarchy," continued the count.
"My lord!" cried the abbess.