The Vicomte arose with difficulty and said, "Father, forgive me the wrong I have done. Forgive me, as I forgive others. No, no, not so; for there is one person I cannot forgive!" He looked around with an expression of intense hatred and contempt. "He has ruined and destroyed me, and all of us; he has delivered us to our enemies,--_that_ man, hear all of you, is Count Monte-Leone!" His head sank on his breast, and his last breath mingled with the kisses of his father. "I have no son!" said the old man in despair; and he sank by the side of the child God had taken away from him. X.--THE CONFESSION. As we have seen in a previous chapter, Count Monte-Leone went to the Prefect of Police to surrender himself to his enemies. The Count did not hesitate, for he preferred a sudden and cruel death to the intolerable life he now led. The Prefect was as civil as possible, and altogether different from what he would have been three days before to a person pointed out as one of the agents. The reason was, that after the energetic protestation of the Count in the presence of M. H---- at the Duke d'Harcourt's, grave doubts had arisen in the mind of the chief of the political police in relation to the services said to have been rendered by the Neapolitan. Making use then of the police itself, and causing the man who said he was an agent of the Count's to be watched, his conviction of the non-participation of Monte-Leone in the treachery became almost certain, and he began to tremble at the idea that he had been made a dupe in this affair, and at the probable consequences. The first of these was the fear of ridicule, that powerful instrument against a police; next, the just recrimination to which the Count might subject them as having slandered him; and the capital error of having left at liberty the most powerful of the Carbonari in Europe, under the belief that he was an ally of the Government--to which he was a mortal foe. All this crowd of faults H---- had committed in his blind confidence, and had led astray the police and all the agents. Thus uneasy, the Chief of Police saw that but one course of safety was left him. This was both bold and adroit, for it foresaw danger and prepared a conductor to turn its thunders aside. H---- went to the Prefect and owned all. The first anger of the latter having passed away, the two chiefs saw with terror that they were equally compromised--the one for acting, and the other for suffering his subordinate to act. They, therefore, adopted the only course left them, Machiavelian it is true, but which extricated them from a great difficulty. This course was, to deny all participation in the malicious reports circulated in relation to the Count, but to suffer the public to imagine what it pleased, and attribute their inaction to carelessness for the result, or to the mystery necessary to be observed in police matters. Count Monte-Leone, too, since the arrest of his