as everybody made some comment on this news of great wealth brought by
the notary.

This abrupt subservience of fate brought Raphael thoroughly to his
senses. He immediately spread out the table-napkin with which he had

lately taken the measure of the piece of shagreen. He heeded nothing
as he laid the talisman upon it, and shuddered involuntarily at the

sight of a slight difference between the present size of the skin and
the outline traced upon the linen.

"Why, what is the matter with him?' Taillefer cried. "He comes by his
fortune very cheaply."

"Soutiens-le Chatillon!" said Bixiou to Emile. "The joy will kill
him."

A ghastly white hue overspread every line of the wan features of the
heir-at-law. His face was drawn, every outline grew haggard; the

hollows in his livid countenance grew deeper, and his eyes were fixed
and staring. He was facing Death.

The opulent banker, surrounded by faded women, and faces with satiety
written on them, the enjoyment that had reached the pitch of agony,

was a living illustration of his own life.
Raphael looked thrice at the talisman, which lay passively within the

merciless outlines on the table-napkin; he tried not to believe it,
but his incredulity vanished utterly before the light of an inner

presentiment. The whole world was his; he could have all things, but
the will to possess them was utterly extinct. Like a traveler in the

midst of the desert, with but a little water left to quench his
thirst, he must measure his life by the draughts he took of it. He saw

what every desire of his must cost him in the days of his life. He
believed in the powers of the Magic Skin at last, he listened to every

breath he drew; he felt ill already; he asked himself:
"Am I not consumptive? Did not my mother die of a lung complaint?"

"Aha, Raphael! what fun you will have! What will you give me?" asked
Aquilina.

"Here's to the death of his uncle, Major O'Flaharty! There is a man
for you."

"He will be a peer of France."
"Pooh! what is a peer of France since July?" said the amateur critic.

"Are you going to take a box at the Bouffons?"
"You are going to treat us all, I hope?" put in Bixiou.

"A man of his sort will be sure to do things in style," said Emile.
The hurrah set up by the jovial assembly rang in Valentin's ears, but

he could not grasp the sense of a single word. Vague thoughts crossed
him of the Breton peasant's life of mechanical labor, without a wish

of any kind; he pictured him burdened with a family, tilling the soil,
living on buckwheat meal, drinking cider out of a pitcher, believing

in the Virgin and the King, taking the sacrament at Easter, dancing of
a Sunday on the green sward, and understanding never a word of the

rector's sermon. The actual scene that lay before him, the gilded
furniture, the courtesans, the feast itself, and the surrounding

splendors, seemed to catch him by the throat and made him cough.
"Do you wish for some asparagus?" the banker cried.

"I WISH FOR NOTHING!" thundered Raphael.
"Bravo!" Taillefer exclaimed; "you understand your position; a fortune

confers the privilege of being impertinent. You are one of us.
Gentlemen, let us drink to the might of gold! M. Valentin here, six

times a millionaire, has become a power. He is a king, like all the
rich; everything is at his disposal, everything lies under his feet.

From this time forth the axiom that 'all Frenchmen are alike in the
eyes of the law,' is for him a fib at the head of the Constitutional

Charter. He is not going to obey the law--the law is going to obey
him. There are neither scaffolds nor executioners for millionaires."

"Yes, there are," said Raphael; "they are their own executioners."
"Here is another victim of prejudices!" cried the banker.

"Let us drink!" Raphael said, putting the talisman into his pocket.
"What are you doing?" said Emile, checking his movement. "Gentlemen,"

he added, addressing the company, who were rather taken aback by
Raphael's behavior, "you must know that our friend Valentin here--what

am I saying?--I mean my Lord Marquis de Valentin--is in the possession
of a secret for obtaining wealth. His wishes are fulfilled as soon as

he knows them. He will make us all rich together, or he is a flunkey,
and devoid of all decent feeling."

"Oh, Raphael dear, I should like a set of pearl ornaments!" Euphrasia
exclaimed.

"If he has any gratitude in him, he will give me a couple of carriages
with fast steppers," said Aquilina.

"Wish for a hundred thousand a year for me!"
"Indian shawls!"

"Pay my debts!"
"Send an apoplexy to my uncle, the old stick!"

"Ten thousand a year in the funds, and I'll cry quits with you,
Raphael!"

"Deeds of gift and no mistake," was the notary's comment.
"He ought, at least, to rid me of the gout!"

"Lower the funds!" shouted the banker.
These phrases flew about like the last discharge of rockets at the end

of a display of fireworks; and were uttered, perhaps, more in earnest
than in jest.

"My good friend," Emile said solemnly, "I shall be quite satisfied
with an income of two hundred thousand livres. Please to set about it

at once."
"Do you not know the cost, Emile?" asked Raphael.

"A nice excuse!" the poet cried; "ought we not to sacrifice ourselves
for our friends?"

"I have almost a mind to wish that you all were dead," Valentin made
answer, with a dark, inscrutable look at his boon companions.

"Dying people are frightfully cruel," said Emile, laughing. "You are
rich now," he went on gravely; "very well, I will give you two months

at most before you grow vilely selfish. You are so dense already that
you cannot understand a joke. You have only to go a little further to

believe in your Magic Skin."
Raphael kept silent, fearing the banter of the company; but he drank

immoderately, trying to drown in intoxication the recollection of his
fatal power.

III
THE AGONY

In the early days of December an old man of some seventy years of age
pursued his way along the Rue de Varenne, in spite of the falling

rain. He peered up at the door of each house, trying to discover the
address of the Marquis Raphael de Valentin, in a simple, childlike

fashion, and with the abstracted look peculiar to philosophers. His
face plainly showed traces of a struggle between a heavy mortification

and an authoritative nature; his long, gray hair hung in disorder
about a face like a piece of parchment shriveling in the fire. If a

painter had come upon this curious character, he would, no doubt, have
transferred him to his sketchbook on his return, a thin, bony figure,

clad in black, and have inscribed beneath it: "Classical poet in
search of a rhyme." When he had identified the number that had been

given to him, this reincarnation of Rollin knocked meekly at the door
of a splendid mansion.

"Is Monsieur Raphael in?" the worthy man inquired of the Swiss in
livery.

"My Lord the Marquis sees nobody," said the servant, swallowing a huge
morsel that he had just dipped in a large bowl of coffee.

"There is his carriage," said the elderly stranger, pointing to a fine
equipage that stood under the woodencanopy that sheltered the steps

before the house, in place of a striped linen awning. "He is going
out; I will wait for him."

"Then you might wait here till to-morrow morning, old boy," said the
Swiss. "A carriage is always waiting for monsieur. Please to go away.

If I were to let any stranger come into the house without orders, I
should lose an income of six hundred francs."