"Listen again. Escaping at length from the hands of La Chouette, wandering without bread, without shelter, hardly eight years of age, she was arrested as a vagabond, and put in prison. Oh! these were the happiest days of your daughter, madame. Yes, in the prison-house, each night she thanked God that she suffered no more from cold and hunger, and was beaten no more. And it was in a prison that she spent the most precious years of a young girl's life, those years which a tender mother always surrounds with so jealous and pious a solicitude; yes, instead of being protected with maternal care, your daughter has only known the brutal indifference of jailers; and then one day, society, in its cruel carelessness, cast her, innocent and pure, beautiful and ingenuous, into the filth and mire of this great city. Unhappy child, abandoned, without support, without advice, delivered to all the chances of misery and vice! Oh!" cried Rudolph, giving free vent to the sobs which overpowered him; "your heart is hardened, your selfishness cruel, but you would have wept--yes, _you_ would have wept, on hearing the touching story of your child. Poor girl! sullied, but not corrupted, still chaste in the midst of this horrible degradation, which was for her a frightful dream; for each word told her horror for the life to which she was so fatally enchained! Oh! if you knew how at each moment were revealed the most adorable instincts--how much goodness--how much touching charity; yes, for it was to relieve an unfortunate more wretched than herself, the poor little thing had spent the little money she had, and which then separated her from the abyss of infamy into which she was plunged. Yes! for the day came--a frightful day--when, without work, without bread, without shelter--horrible women met her, exhausted from weakness--from hunger--and--" Rudolph could not finish, but cried in a heartrending voice: "And this was my daughter! my child!" "Imprecations on my head!" murmured Sarah, concealing her face in her hands, as if she had feared the light of day. "Yes," cried Rudolph, "imprecations on you! for it is your abandonment of this child which has caused all these horrors. Maledictions on you! for when, rescuing her from this filth, I had placed her in a peaceable retreat, you had her torn away by your miserable accomplices. Maledictions on you! for this again placed her in the power of Jacques Ferrand." At this name, Rudolph stopped suddenly. He shuddered as if he had pronounced it for the first time. It was because he now pronounced this name for the first time since he had known that his daughter was the victim of that monster. The features of the prince assumed then a frightful expression of rage and hatred. Silent, immovable, he remained, as it were, crushed by this thought--that the murderer of his child still lived. Sarah, notwithstanding her increasing weakness, was struck by his sinister look; she feared for herself.