“Has madame patience to hear his story? Common enough, common enough. The father of the little black-haired one was once a clerk in a bank at Lille. He had assured prospects, enough for present wants; a charming--oh! yes, a charming wife--and a child. Charming women are apt to be vain; vain ones are apt to be extravagant, madame. She wanted money--always money. Her husband was like wax in her hands. _Hein!_ She molded her wax well--so well. She made of an honest man a rogue, madame, a forger, and a thief.” He broke off to wipe away the leaden drops that had gathered on his face, with a miserable rag of a tattered handkerchief. His gaunt figure quivered, and the sinews started out like cords on the backs of his wasted hands. Fenella spoke to him gently. “It distresses you to speak of it,” she said. “It relieves me to speak of it. Figure to yourself, madame, how this man must have loved that wretch to sin so at her bidding. And she--she had not even the merit of being faithful to him. He found that out before the trial--for the frauds were discovered, and he was arrested. He denounced her as his accomplice. She fled before the law could lay hands on her--with one who had been, for long, her secret lover.” His face was frightful as he said the words. If he had been himself the wretched dupe, whose dreadful story he had upon his lips, he could not have looked and spoken with greater rancor. But he went on: “So my friend--always my friend, madame will remember--is found guilty and sentenced to imprisonment for eight years. He is sent to the ‘Maison Centrale’ at Clairvaux. Compulsory labor, absolute silence; silence in the dormitory, silence in the workshop, silence in the yard, silence in bed, from half-past six until six the next morning is the Clairvaux routine. Madame would never imagine how many cries of execration and despair, how many sobs of anguish, how many oaths of vengeance can be packed into the space of one human breast, that has the padlock of the Law upon it.” He struck his own breast as he spoke fiercely, and shook his clenched hand in the air.