"You are an angel," she said, "and it requires courage on my part to refuse you. But I love you too well to chain your brilliant destiny to mine, melancholy, as it is, and alas! complete; I love your father too well to be willing to cause him this sorrow." "My father? you doubt my father?" cried Mario, beside himself. "Ah! Lauriane, do you not understand that your father deceived you! Say that you do not love me, that you have never loved me!" At that moment there was a violent ringing at the gate of the convent, and a moment later the Marquis de Bois-Doré rushed into the parlor and embraced Mario and Lauriane in turn. He had not received Clindor's message, but Lauriane's letter; and as the treaty was signed and he was returning to Berry, he had come to the convent to take her home with him. He was greatly surprised to find Mario there, thinking that he had already returned to Briantes. The situation was explained to him; then Mario, still intensely agitated, said to him: "You arrive in good time, father. Lauriane here thinks that you do not love her!" A second explanation ensued. The marquis perceived Mario's agitation and grief, and he smiled. Lauriane suddenly understood that smile. "Dear marquis," she cried, blushing and trembling from head to foot, "give me back the letter I wrote you when I thought that your son was dead! Give it back to me, I insist; do not show it." "No, no," replied the marquis, handing the letter to Mario with a sly expression; "he shall never see it, unless he snatches it from my hands--which he is quite capable of doing, as you see!" LXXIV The letter was short and disconsolate; Mario had soon devoured it with his eyes, while Lauriane hid her face on the old man's shoulder. Lauriane, in the first outburst of bitter grief, had written the marquis that she had always loved Mario since their separation and should wear mourning for him all her life. "For now," she said, "I feel for the first time that I am really widowed!" "You are not, you never will be, my Lauriane," said the marquis, removing her little black cap for a moment. "I have never desired any other daughter than you, and we will go home and prepare for the wedding at Briantes." I leave you to imagine the rejoicing at the old manor at the simultaneous return of the Beaux Messieurs de Bois-Doré, Lauriane, Adamas, Aristandre, and even Clindor, who, the better to destroy the spell cast upon him by the gypsy, hastened to pay court to all the village maidens. The marriage of Monsieur Sylvain's beloved children could not be celebrated publicly until Lauriane had made submission to the king and obtained her pardon, for she had proclaimed herself a rebel in a moment of desperation; and, despite Monsieur Poulain's influence, the king remained inflexible so long as the _War in the South_ lasted. It was short and bloody. It was the last gasp of the party as a political faction.