Or perhaps--for it was not gratifying or dignified thus to live in terror of a minister's daughter--perhaps he might ultimately learn to associate and hold intercourse with her, unharmed.

That would be a triumph worth striving for! Indeed, how could he feel secure until it had been won?
Again, did there at present exist any such risk as he had brought himself to imagine?
Was not this first ordeal, and its effects, all that was to be apprehended?
What if all his anxiety, and self-control, and prudence, had been wasting themselves upon nothing?
Would it not be worth while to try the experiment?
to prove whether he was still liable to this strange witchery and enchantment?
even if so it should turn out, it was still well that the point should be settled once for all.

Decided, then, that he should take the first opportunity to put himself to the test.
Thus did the young man argue around his instinct, ignorant that the poison was at that moment circulating in his blood, and prompting the very sophistries that his brain produced.

He who is cured begets a wholesome aversion toward what has harmed him; he feels no curiosity to prove whether or no he be yet open to mischief from it.

Bressant's poison was in fact an elixir, whose delicious intoxication he had experienced once, and which his whole nature secretly but urgently craved to taste again.
A result somewhat similar to this was doubtless what Professor Valeyon aimed at in his plan of developing the emotional and affectional elements of his pupil, albeit he was far from imagining what might be the cost and risk to every thing which he himself held most dear.