Page:Georges Eekhoud - Escal Vigor, a novel.djvu/119

Rh grinding of the teeth. He seemed to carry within him that bitter smoke whereof Dante speaks: Portando dentro accidioso fummo. He looked as though he wished to stifle a secret pain, to silence one knew not what remorse! In his large ultramarine eyes, there was often something provocative and offensive, but when he omitted to compose his face, the same eyes were full of that boundless agony that Blandine had once caught there, and which had produced upon her a lifelong impression, an agony like the terror of a beast at bay, of a condemned man ascending the scaffold, or better still, like the aspect, at once sublime and sinister, of a Prometheus, a stealer of forbidden fire.

Liberal even to prodigality, passionate for righteous causes, revolted by the rascalities of the multitude, sensitive to excess, he arrived at a point where he could not suffer contradiction and fell into a rage with anyone who attempted to thwart him. Thus, one day when Blandine wished to take from him a pretty child, the offspring of some poor people on a visit to Madame de Kehlmark, and for whom Henry had conceived a tenderness, he so far forgot himself as to pursue his friend with a dagger and even to