These words were uttered without the marchioness making the least movement--her lips trembled, rather than opened--it seemed a marble statue that was speaking. “Yes, madam,” replied Paul, in a tone of intense feeling, “yes, yes, I desired to speak with you; it is long since first this desire was cherished in my heart, and it has never left me. Recollections of infancy preyed upon the mind of the grown man. I remembered a woman who would formerly glide to my cradle, and in my youthful dreams, I thought her the guardian angel of my infancy. Since that time, still so fresh in my memory, although so distant, more than once, believe me, I have awakened with a start, imagining that I had felt upon my forehead the impression of a maternal kiss: and then seeing that there was no one near me, I would call that person, hoping she would, perhaps, return. It is now twenty years since first I thus had called, and this is the first time she has replied to me. Can it have been as I have often fearfully imagined, that you would have trembled at again beholding me? Can it be true, as I at this moment fear, that you have naught to say to me?” “And had I feared your return,” said the marchioness, in a hollow tone, “should I have been to blame? You appeared before me only yesterday, sir, and now the mystery which ought to have been concealed to all but God and myself, is known to both my children.” “Is it my fault that God has been pleased to reveal the secret to them? Was it I that conducted Marguerite, despairing and in tears, to the bedside of her dying father, whose protection she had gone to ask, and whose confession she was compelled to hear? Was it I that led her to Achard, and was it not you, madam, that followed her thither? As to Emanuel, the report you heard, and that shattered glass, attest, that I would have preferred death rather than to have saved my life at the expense of your secret. No, no, believe me, madam, I am the instrument, and not the hand; the effect, and not the cause. No, madam, it is God who has brought about all this, that you might see at your feet, as you have just now seen them, your two children whom you have so long banished from your arms!” “But there is a third,” said the marchioness, in a voice in which emotion began to evince itself, “and I know not what I have to expect from him.” “Let me accomplish a last duty, madam, and that once fulfilled, he will on his knees await your orders.” “And of what nature is this duty?” “It is to restore his brother to the rank to which he is entitled, his sister to that happiness which she has lost--to his mother that tranquillity of mind, which she has so long sought in vain.” “And yet, thanks to you,” replied the marchioness, “M. de Maurepas refused to M. de Lectoure the regiment he had solicited for my son.” “Because,” replied Paul, taking the commission from his pocket and laying it on the table, “because the king had already granted it to me, for the brother of Marguerite.”