The waxen fingers of the Countess, fingers of a holy image, turn up the card called L'Amoureux. Never, never before... never before has the Countess cast herself a fate involving L'Amoureux. She shakes, she trembles, her great eyes close beneath her finely veined, nervously throbbing eyelids; the lovely cartomancer has, this time, the first time, dealt herself a hand of love and death.