"No, uncle," Marcel replied aloud. "Madame la comtesse is thanking you. She is very ill, as you see; do not ask her to make long speeches." Marcel had relied on the impression that the alteration in Julie's features would probably produce on Monsieur Antoine. That impression was in truth profound. He stared at her with a dazed, cruel, yet terrified expression, and said to himself with a joy not unmingled with terror: "That is my work!" "Madame," he said, after a moment's hesitation, "I said that I would be revenged on you, that I would force you to ask my pardon for your insults. Do you want to get through with it and admit that you were in the wrong? I ask nothing but that." "What is my offence?" said Julie. "Explain it so that I may know what it is." Antoine was sorely embarrassed to reply, and his anger, which had almost disappeared, reawoke, as always happened when he had no charge to make which would bear the test of common sense. "Ah! so you don't think you have insulted me?" he said. "Very good, _mordi!_ you shall ask my pardon in so many words if you don't want Julien to have to pay for you." "Must I ask your pardon on my knees?" queried Julie, with a heartrending attempt at arrogance. "Suppose that I should demand that?" retorted the old man, dizzy with anger when he felt that he was defied. "Here I am!" said Madame d'Estrelle, kneeling before him. That was for her the last station on the road of martyrdom, the apology which the innocent victim was compelled to make, with the rope about the neck and the torch in the hand, before ascending the scaffold. At that moment of sublime self-immolation, her angered heart suddenly overflowed, her face became transfigured, she smiled the ecstatic smile of the saints, and the ineffable beauty of heaven revealed was reflected in her eyes. Antoine did not understand, but he was dazzled. His anger subsided, not under the influence of emotion, but before a sort of superstitious terror. "That is all right," he said. "I am satisfied and I forgive Julien. Adieu!" He turned his back and fled. Marcel said to Julie a few encouraging words, which she did not hear or did not try to understand; then he ran after Monsieur Antoine. "Now, my excellent uncle," he said in the boldest and most stinging tone he had yet adopted with him, "you should be satisfied, indeed; you have killed Madame d'Estrelle!" "Killed her?" said his uncle, turning abruptly upon him. "What infernal nonsense is that?" "The nonsense would consist in taking her joy and her gratitude seriously, and you surely are not capable of that. That woman is in despair, she is dying of grief." "You lie, you are dodging the question! She is still a little angry, she is sick on account of the way I have thwarted her lately; but in reality she is making the best of it, and while she may be chafing at her bit, she sees well enough that I am saving her in spite of her."