Once started on this subject the marquis talked all through the dinner, then during the whole evening. He enjoyed the consolation, the only one possible in certain crises, of recollecting aloud. And the religious worship which the unhappy father preserved for the dead was for the son, who listened without responding, something tragical at this moment when he was preparing to do what? Was he really about to bring this terrible blow on the old man? In his own room, with the great silence of a provincial city around him, he took up his sister’s letter and read it again, although he knew by heart every phrase in it. There arose from these pages traced by the hand forever still, a sigh so profound, a breath of agony so sad and so heartrending! The illusion of the girl had been so mad, her struggles so sincere, her awakening so bitter, that the count felt again the tears flow down his cheeks. This was the second time that he had wept that day, he who, since the death of Charlotte, had kept his eyes dry and burning with hate. He said: “Greslon has deserved--” He remained motionless some minutes, and, walking toward the chimney in which the fire was just extinguished, he placed on the half-consumed log the leaves of the letter. He struck a match and slipped it under the paper. He saw the line of flame develop all around, then again the frail writing, then transform this only proof of the miserable amour and suicide into a blackish mass. The brother finished by mixing this debris with the ashes. He lay down saying aloud: “It is done,” and he slept, as on the night after his first battle, the exhausted sleep which succeeds with men of action, great expenditure of will, and he did not open his eyes until nine o’clock the next day. “Monsieur, the marquis forbade me to wake you,” said Pourat when, called by his master, he opened the shutters. The sunlight entered, the bright sunlight instead of the sad and lowering sky of the evening before. “He has been gone an hour. My captain knows that to-day they are going to take the accused by the subterranean passage, everybody is so excited against him.” “What subterranean passage?” asked André. “That one which goes from the jail to the Palais de Justice. They use it for great criminals, those who might be torn to pieces by the public. Faith, captain, if I saw that fellow go by, I believe I should feel like knocking him over on the spot. Those enraged dogs do not judge, they kill. But,” he continued, “I have forgotten the morning’s letters in the salon.”