"True," exclaimed the notary, with bitterness, "I am old, I am ugly, I can only inspire disgust and aversion. She overwhelms me with contempt, jests at me,—and yet I have not the resolution, the power to send her away. I have only the resolution to suffer!"
"Oh, silly old mourner! And what an absurd elderly gentleman, with his sufferings!" cried Cecily, in a contemptuous and sarcastic tone; "he only knows how to groan, to despair,—and yet he has been for ten days shut up alone with a young woman in a lone house."
"But this woman scorns me,—this woman is armed,—this woman is shut up!" groaned the notary, furiously.
"Well, conquer her scorn, make the dagger fall from her hands, compel her to open the door which separates her from yourself! But not by brute force, that would be useless."
"How, then?"
"By the strength of your passion."
"Passion! And can I inspire it?"
"Why, you are nothing but a lawyer, affecting piety,—I really pity you. Is it for me to teach you your part? You are ugly,—be terrible, and one may forget your ugliness. You are old,—be energetic, and one may forget your age. You are repulsive,—become menacing. Since you cannot be the noble steed that neighs proudly in the midst of his harem, do not become the stupid camel that bends the knee and offers his back; be the tiger! The old tiger, that roars in the midst of carnage, still excites admiration; his tigress responds to him from the deepest recesses of the desert."
At this language, which was not deficient in a sort of natural and hardy eloquence, Jacques Ferrand shuddered; struck by the expression, wild and almost fierce, which Cecily's features displayed, as, with her bosom palpitating, her nostrils open, her mouth defying, she fastened on him her large and brilliant black eyes. Never had she seemed to him more fascinating, or more resplendently beautiful than at this moment.
"Speak,—speak again!" he exclaimed, with excitement. "For now you speak in earnest. Oh, if I could—"