“Your father bent slowly over you, supporting himself by the wall, and looking sorrowfully upon you: ‘Louis,’ said he to me, in a hollow voice, ‘should I be killed, and which may happen, wo to this child! You will deliver him with this letter to Field, my valet de chambre, whom I have charged to conduct him to Selkirk, in Scotland, there to leave him in sure hands. When he is twenty-five years old, he will bring you the other half of this gold coin, and will ask you to reveal to him the secret of his birth. You will communicate it; for then, perhaps, his mother will be alone and isolated. As to these papers which prove his birth, you will not deliver them to him, until after the death of the Marquis d’Auray. Now I have said all that is necessary, let us go, for it is the appointed hour. He then leaned over your bed, bent down toward you, and although he was a man of fortitude, as I have told you, I saw a tear fall upon your cheek.” “Proceed,” said Paul, in a voice choked by emotion. “The rendezvous was in one of the avenues of the park, about a hundred paces from this house. When we reached the place, we found the marquis there, he had been waiting for us some minutes. Near him upon a bank were pistols ready loaded. The adversaries bowed to each other without exchanging a word. The marquis pointed to the weapons--they each took one, and then, according to the terms which had been agreed upon, as your father had told me, they placed themselves, mute and gloomily, at the distance of thirty paces, and then began to walk towards each other. Oh! it was a moment ef agony for me, I can assure you,” rejoined the old man, almost as much moved as if the scene were then actually passing before him, “when I saw the distance gradually diminishing between these two men. When they were only about ten paces, the marquis stopped and fired. I looked at your father; not a muscle of his face was moved, so that I thought him safe and unhurt. He continued to walk on till he came close to the marquis, and then placing the muzzle of the pistol to his heart--” “He did not kill him, I trust,” cried Paul seizing the old man’s arm. “He said to him, Your life is in my hands, sir, and I might take it, but I wish you to live, that you may pardon me, as I do you. And uttering these words, he fell dead at the feet of the marquis, whose ball had passed through his chest.” “Oh! my father! my father!” cried Paul, wringing his hands. “And the man who killed my father--he still lives, does he not? He is still young, and has strength enough to wield a sword or raise a pistol? We will go to him--to-day--instantly! You will tell him, that it is his son! that he must fight with him.” “God has avenged your father,” replied Achard--“that man is mad.” “That is true--I had forgotten that,” murmured Paul. “And in his madness that bloody scene is ever before his eyes, and he repeats ten times a day the dying words your father addressed to him.”