muttered the spectre. “With a woman?”

“Confiteor, — I confess — .”

“Who is called — ?”

“La Smeralda,” said Phoebus, gayly. All his heedlessness had gradually returned.

At this name, the shadow’s grasp shook the arm of Phoebus in a fury.

“Captain Phoebus de Ch�teaupers, thou liest!”

Any one who could have beheld at that moment the captain’s inflamed countenance, his leap backwards, so violent that he disengaged himself from the grip which held him, the proud air with which he clapped his hand on his swordhilt, and, in the presence of this wrath the gloomy immobility of the man in the cloak, —