My first impression was only that here was a priest, and that he was looking at me--not at the man craving his assistance on the floor, or at those who stood round him, but at me, who sat away in the shadow beyond the ring of light! This was surprising; but a second glance explained it, for then I saw that he was the Jacobin monk who had haunted my mother's dying hours.
And, amazed as much at this strange RENCONTRE as at the man's boldness, I sprang up and strode forwards, forgetting, in an impulse of righteous anger, the office he came to do.

And this the more as his face, still turned to me, seemed instinct to my eyes with triumphant malice.

As I moved towards him, however, with a fierce exclamation on my lips, he suddenly dropped his eyes and knelt.

Immediately M.Francois cried 'Hush!' and the men turned to me with scandalised faces.

I fell back.
Yet even then, whispering on his knees by the dying man, the knave was thinking, I felt sure, of me, glorying at once in his immunity and the power it gave him to tantalise me without fear.
I determined, whatever the result, to intercept him when all was over; and on the man dying a few minutes later, I walked resolutely to the open side of the shed, thinking it likely he might try to slip away as mysteriously as he had come.