"No one is more able to help you," said the crone; "she can counsel you what to do, and if need be find means to conceal you from the search that will be made for you."

"Haste, then, and bid her come to-morrow night! Why not tonight?"

Caroline was all nervous impatience. "I will wait her coming in the vaulted chamber; I will watch for her as one in the valley of death watches for the angel of deliverance. Bid her come, and at midnight to-morrow she shall find the door of the secret chamber open to admit her."

The eagerness of the ill-fated girl to see La Corriveau outran every calculation of Mere Malheur. It was in vain and useless for her to speak further on the subject; Caroline would say no more. Her thoughts ran violently in the direction suggested by the artful letter. She would see La Corriveau to-morrow night, and would make no more avowals to Mere Malheur, she said to herself.

Seeing no more was to be got out of her, the crone bade her a formal farewell, looking at her curiously as she did so, and wondering in her mind if she should ever see her again. For the old creature had a shrewd suspicion that La Corriveau had not told her all her intentions with respect to this singular girl.

Caroline returned her salute, still holding the letter in her hand. She sat down to peruse it again, and observed not Mere Malheur's equivocal glance as she turned her eyes for the last time upon the innocent girl, doomed to receive the midnight visit from La Corriveau.

"There is death in the pot!" the crone muttered as she went out,--"La Corriveau comes not here on her own errand either! That girl is too beautiful to live, and to some one her death is worth gold! It will go hard, but La Corriveau shall share with me the reward of the work of tomorrow night!"

In the long gallery she encountered Dame Tremblay "ready to eat her up,"

as she told La Corriveau afterwards, in the eagerness of her curiosity to learn the result of her interview with Caroline.

Mere Malheur was wary, and accustomed to fence with words. It was necessary to tell a long tale of circumstances to Dame Tremblay, but not necessary nor desirable to tell the truth. The old crone therefore, as soon as she had seated herself in the easy chair of the housekeeper and refreshed herself by twice accepting the dame's pressing invitation to tea and cognac, related with uplifted hands and shaking head a narrative of bold lies regarding what had really passed during her interview with Caroline.

"But who is she, Mere Malheur? Did she tell you her name? Did she show you her palm?"

"Both, dame, both! She is a girl of Ville Marie who has run away from her parents for love of the gallant Intendant, and is in hiding from them. They wanted to put her into the Convent to cure her of love. The Convent always cures love, dame, beyond the power of philtres to revive it!" and the old crone laughed inwardly to herself, as if she doubted her own saying.

Eager to return to La Corriveau with the account of her successful interview with Caroline, she bade Dame Tremblay a hasty but formal farewell, and with her crutched stick in her hand trudged stoutly back to the city.

Mere Malheur, while the sun was yet high, reached her cottage under the rock, where La Corriveau was eagerly expecting her at the window. The moment she entered, the masculine voice of La Corriveau was heard asking loudly,--

"Have you seen her, Mere Malheur? Did you give her the letter? Never mind your hat! tell me before you take it off!" The old crone was tugging at the strings, and La Corriveau came to help her.

"Yes! she took your letter," replied she, impatiently. "She took my story like spring water. Go at the stroke of twelve to-morrow night and she will let you in, Dame Dodier; but will she let you out again, eh?"

The crone stood with her hat in her hand, and looked with a wicked glance at La Corriveau.

"If she will let me in, I shall let myself out, Mere Malheur," replied Corriveau in a low tone. "But why do you ask that?"

"Because I read mischief in your eye and see it twitching in your thumb, and you do not ask me to share your secret! Is it so bad as that, Dame Dodier?"

"Pshaw! you are sharing it! wait and you will see your share of it! But tell me, Mere Malheur, how does she look, this mysterious lady of the Chateau?" La Corriveau sat down, and placed her long, thin hand on the arm of the old crone.

"Like one doomed to die, because she is too good to live. Sorrow is a bad pasture for a young creature like her to feed on, Dame Dodier!" was the answer, but it did not change a muscle on the face of La Corriveau.

"Ay! but there are worse pastures than sorrow for young creatures like her, and she has found one of them," she replied, coldly.

"Well! as we make our bed so must we lie on it, Dame Dodier,--that is what I always tell the silly young things who come to me asking their fortunes; and the proverb pleases them. They always think the bridal bed must be soft and well made, at any rate."

"They are fools! better make their death-bed than their bridal bed! But I must see this piece of perfection of yours to-morrow night, dame! The Intendant returns in two days, and he might remove her. Did she tell you about him?"

"No! Bigot is a devil more powerful than the one we serve, dame. I fear him!"

"Tut! I fear neither devil nor man. It was to be at the hour of twelve!

Did you not say at the hour of twelve, Mere Malheur?"

"Yes! go in by the vaulted passage and knock at the secret door. She will admit you. But what will you do with her, Dame Dodier? Is she doomed? Could you not be gentle with her, dame?"

There was a fall in the voice of Mere Malheur,--an intonation partly due to fear of consequences, partly to a fibre of pity which--dry and disused--something in the look of Caroline had stirred like a dead leaf quivering in the wind.

"Tut! has she melted your old dry heart to pity, Mere Malheur! Ha, ha!

who would have thought that! and yet I remember she made a soft fool of me for a minute in the wood of St. Valier!" La Corriveau spoke in a hard tone, as if in reproving Mere Malheur she was also reproving herself.

"She is unlike any other woman I ever saw," replied the crone, ashamed of her unwonted sympathy. "The devil is clean out of her as he is out of a church."

"You are a fool, Mere Malheur! Out of a church, quotha!" and La Corriveau laughed a loud laugh; "why I go to church myself, and whisper my prayers backwards to keep on terms with the devil, who stands nodding behind the altar to every one of my petitions,--that is more than some people get in return for their prayers," added she.

"I pray backwards in church too, dame, but I could never get sight of him there, as you do: something always blinds me!" and the two old sinners laughed together at the thought of the devil's litanies they recited in the church.

"But how to get to Beaumanoir? I shall have to walk, as you did, Mere Malheur. It is a vile road, and I must take the byway through the forest. It were worth my life to be seen on this visit," said La Corriveau, conning on her fingers the difficulties of the by-path, which she was well acquainted with, however.

"There is a moon after nine, by which hour you can reach the wood of Beaumanoir," observed the crone. "Are you sure you know the way, Dame Dodier?"

"As well as the way into my gown! I know an Indian canotier who will ferry me across to Beauport, and say nothing. I dare not allow that prying knave, Jean Le Nocher, or his sharp wife, to mark my movements."

"Well thought of, Dame Dodier; you are of a craft and subtlety to cheat Satan himself at a game of hide and seek!" The crone looked with genuine admiration, almost worship, at La Corriveau as she said this; "but I doubt he will find both of us at last, dame, when we have got into our last corner."

"Well, vogue la galere!" exclaimed La Corriveau, starting up. "Let it go as it will! I shall walk to Beaumanoir, and I shall fancy I wear golden garters and silver slippers to make the way easy and pleasant. But you must be hungry, Mere, with your long tramp. I have a supper prepared for you, so come and eat in the devil's name, or I shall be tempted to say grace in nomine Domini, and choke you."

The two women went to a small table and sat down to a plentiful meal of such things as formed the dainties of persons of their rank of life. Upon the table stood the dish of sweetmeats which the thievish maidservant had brought to Mere Malheur with the groom's story of the conversation between Bigot and Varin, a story which, could Angelique have got hold of it, would have stopped at once her frightful plot to kill the unhappy Caroline.

"I were a fool to tell her that story of the groom's," muttered La Corriveau to herself, "and spoil the fairest experiment of the aqua tofana ever made, and ruin my own fortune too! I know a trick worth two of that," and she laughed inwardly to herself a laugh which was repeated in hell and made merry the ghosts of Beatrice Spara, Exili, and La Voisin.

All next day La Corriveau kept closely to the house, but she found means to communicate to Angelique her intention to visit Beaumanoir that night.

The news was grateful, yet strangely moving to Angelique; she trembled and turned pale, not for truth, but for doubt and dread of possible failure or discovery.

She sent by an unknown hand to the house of Mere Malheur a little basket containing a bouquet of roses so beautiful and fragrant that they might have been plucked in the garden of Eden.

La Corriveau carried the basket into an inner chamber, a small room, the window of which never saw the sun, but opened against the close, overhanging rock, which was so near that it might be touched by the hand. The dark, damp wall of the cliff shed a gloomy obscurity in the room even at midday.

The small black eyes of La Corriveau glittered like poniards as she opened the basket, and taking out the bouquet, found attached to it by a ribbon a silken purse containing a number of glittering pieces of gold.

She pressed the coins to her cheek, and even put them between her lips to taste their sweetness, for money she loved beyond all things. The passion of her soul was avarice; her wickedness took its direction from the love of money, and scrupled at no iniquity for the sake of it.

She placed the purse carefully in her bosom, and took up the roses, regarding them with a strange look of admiration as she muttered, "They are beautiful and they are sweet! men would call them innocent! they are like her who sent them, fair without as yet; like her who is to receive them, fair within." She stood reflecting for a few moments, and exclaimed as she laid the bouquet upon the table,--

"Angelique des Meloises, you send your gold and your roses to me because you believe me to be a worse demon than yourself, but you are worthy to be crowned tonight with these roses as queen of hell and mistress of all the witches that ever met in Grand Sabbat at the palace of Galienne, where Satan sits on a throne of gold!"

La Corriveau looked out of the window and saw a corner of the rock lit up with the last ray of the setting sun. She knew it was time to prepare for her journey. She loosened her long black and gray elfin locks, and let them fall dishevelled over her shoulders. Her thin, cruel lips were drawn to a rigid line, and her eyes were filled with red fire as she drew the casket of ebony out of her bosom and opened it with a reverential touch, as a devotee would touch a shrine of relics. She took out a small, gilded vial of antique shape, containing a clear, bright liquid, which, as she shook it up, seemed filled with a million sparks of fire.

Before drawing the glass stopper of the vial, La Corriveau folded a handkerchief carefully over her mouth and nostrils, to avoid inhaling the volatile essence of its poisonous contents. Then, holding the bouquet with one hand at arm's length, she sprinkled the glowing roses with the transparent liquid from the vial which she held in the other hand, repeating, in a low, harsh tone, the formula of an ancient incantation, which was one of the secrets imparted to Antonio Exili by the terrible Beatrice Spara.

La Corriveau repeated by rote, as she had learned from her mother, the ill-omened words, hardly knowing their meaning, beyond that they were something very potent, and very wicked, which had been handed down through generations of poisoners and witches from the times of heathen Rome: