Convinced, at last, that wine and good cheer had not blockaded out the enemy, and having to do, in Olivier Dalibard, with a very different temper from the doctor's, he assented with a tolerable grace to the trial of a strict regimen and to daily exercise in the open air.

Dalibard now became constantly with him; the increase of his influence was as natural as it was apparent.

Lucretia trembled; she divined a danger in his power, now separate from her own, and which threatened to be independent of it.

She became abstracted and uneasy; jealousy of the Provencal possessed her.

She began to meditate schemes for his downfall.