IT was nine o’clock in the evening, the season was well advanced, and a heavy mist hung over the land. M. Longuet went up the long drive toward the “Villa Flots de Azure.” His hand trembled as he cautiously pushed open the little garden gate. He crossed the garden step by step, to look around. His whole demeanor was one of evil intent. There was a light in the parlor, and the window was half open. With short steps ThÉophraste advanced, and stretching his head he peered in.

He fell back groaning. Placing his hands over his face, he tore the white locks on his forehead. The sight had frenzied him, and he felt a pang of agonizing jealousy go through his frame.

Marceline and Adolphe were there, locked in affectionate embrace! This is what he had come to see! His wife no doubt was happy, but in quite a different way from what he expected.

He sat down on the ground and wept with rage. Rising, his curiosity forced him to get nearer and listen.

What he heard only made him worse, and he inwardly felt that he was about to commit a great crime. However, he battled against this feeling, and ran away from the house. Something compelled him to return!

In a state of sanguinary expectation, comparable to nothing in the history of crimes, he again retraced his steps, found himself in the garden again, and without waiting to look in he bounded into the parlor.

M. Lecamus and Marceline were taken aback, and both uttered a cry of surprise. Their surprise was soon turned to terror, as ThÉophraste, seizing some stout cord, ran to Adolphe, and with superhuman strength and agility bound him hand and foot. Dragging him to the hall, he tied him to a newel post and left him. It was all done with such lightning speed that Adolphe hadn’t the time to resist the first attack, and he was as a child in the ferocious grip of ThÉophraste.

Turning around he ran to the sitting-room, and seized an old sword that was hanging on the wall. Marceline in her terror called to Lecamus to mind his ears. She feared that he would undergo the same treatment as Signor Petito. However, nothing was further from ThÉophraste’s thoughts, for turning on Marceline he struck her down with one blow. Two seconds later he was holding her head up to Adolphe, saying: “Haste thee now to kiss these lips while they are still warm.”

Adolphe could do nothing, so he touched the lips of the dead woman, and then fell in a faint.

ThÉophraste ran upstairs, and brought down from the garret an old trunk, and in less than twenty-five minutes he had the body of Marceline cut up and placed in it. He closed the trunk with a key, and putting it over his shoulder he said good-by to Lecamus. However, he might have said good-by to the door-post, for Lecamus was in a dead faint and choking from the cords around his neck.

ThÉophraste and the trunk disappeared in the darkness.

That same night one could have seen a man on a barge in the Seine discharging the contents of a trunk into the river. They could also have heard him murmur: “My poor Marceline, my poor Marceline! It was not your fault.”

At dawn ThÉophraste knocked at Ambrose’s door. Ambrose saw that he was greatly agitated, and asked him in sympathetic tones what had happened.

ThÉophraste could not reply. His tongue seemed riveted to his mouth. He crawled to the bed, and, lying down, wept.

At last Ambrose was able to console him sufficiently to get these few words from him: “I felt the flame of murder pass through my veins. The impulse to kill had returned to me after centuries. The same impulse that had made me decapitate my faithless wife, Marie Antoinette Neron, two hundred years previously, and to throw her body into the river. I forgive M. Lecamus. When I am dead go and look for him and tell him that I name him my testamentary executor. I leave him all my worldly goods. He will know what to do with the little oaken chest, in which is locked the terrible secrets of the last months of my sad life.” Having said these words, ThÉophraste raised himself on the pillow, for the oppression increased, and he knew that the end was near. His look was no longer of this world. His gaze was fixed on some imaginary object far away, and in a doleful voice he said: “I have seen-I see-I turn again toward the square ray of light.”

And he expired!

THE END