“Brother, I demand, since a union with the only being I could have loved, is said to be impossible, I demand that my punishment be regulated according to my strength to bear it. My mother--may heaven pardon her!--tore my child from me as if she had never herself been a mother, and my child will be brought up far from me, neglected, and in obscurity. You, Emanuel, removed the father, as my mother did the child, and you were more cruel to him than the case required; I will not say as man to man, but even as a judge towards a guilty person. As to myself, you have both united to impose upon me a martyrdom more painful still. Well, then, Emanuel, I demand in the name of our childhood spent in the same cradle, of our youth passed under the same roof, in the name of the tender appellations of brother and sister, which nature bestowed upon us--I demand that a convent be opened to me, and that its gates should close upon me for ever. And in that convent, I swear to you, Emanuel, that every day upon my knees, before God, my forehead bent down to the stone-pavement, weighed down by my fault, I will entreat the Lord as a recompense for all my sufferings, to restore my father to reason, my mother to happiness, and to pour on you, Emanuel, honor, and glory and fortune. I swear to you, I will do this.” “Yes; and the world will say that I had a sister whom I sacrificed to my fortune, whose property I inherited while she still lived! Why this is sheer madness!” “Listen to me, Emanuel,” rejoined Marguerite, supporting herself on the back of a chair, near which she was standing. “Well?” replied Emanuel. “When you have pledged your word, you keep it, do you not?” “I am a gentleman.” “Well, then! look at this bracelet.” “I see it--perfectly--what then?” “It is fastened by a key--the key which opens it is attached to a ring, and with that ring, I pledged my word that I would not be released from a promise I had made, until the ring should be brought back and returned to me.” “And he who has the key of it?” “Thanks to you, and to my mother, Emanuel, he is too far from us to ask it of him. He is at Cayenne.” “Before you are married two months,” replied Emanuel, with an ironical smile, “that bracelet will be so irksome to you, that you will be the first to get rid of it.” “I thought that I had told you it is locked upon my arm.” “You know what people do when they have lost the key and cannot get into their house--they send for a locksmith.” “Well! in my case, Emanuel,” replied Marguerite, rasing her voice, and extending her arm with a solemn gesture, “they must send for the executioner then, for this hand shall be cut off before I give it to another.” “Silence! silence!” cried Emanuel, rising hastily, and looking anxiously towards the door of the inner room.