Erebus smiled bitterly, and replied: “My life belongs to me, since I can free myself from it when it becomes a burden. When I shall have left you, I can live no longer. I do not kill myself at your feet, because I still hope to be useful to you. What good is my life henceforth? You have made me understand how criminal has been the life I have been leading. But the future! The future for me is you, and I am unworthy of you, and you do not love me--and you will never love me. Ah, cursed be the Bohemian who has deceived me, who told me that you had not forgotten him who saved your father’s life!” “I have never forgotten that you were my father’s saviour,” said Reine, with dignity, “nor can I forget the outrage practised upon me, yet I ought to take kindly what you have done to repair that wrong. Repentance for the greatest crimes finds pardon before the Lord! If I am permitted to see my father and my home again, I will forgive you. But before I leave, I will say to you: ‘Never despair of the infinite goodness of God! Instead of yielding to an insane despair, abandon for ever those who made you their accomplice, seek instruction in our holy religion, learn to know and love and bless the Lord, become a good man; prove by an exemplary life that you have forsaken the criminal career which wicked men forced upon you; then can we pity your past misfortunes, then we can forget your outrages, then we can believe, indeed, that you wish to expiate the guilty actions of the past, by good.’” “And if I follow your counsel,” cried Erebus, transported by the pious and lofty language of Reine, “if I become a good man, may I some day present myself at Maison-Forte?” Reine looked downwards. The door of the cabin suddenly opened, and the Bohemian entered, and perhaps saved the young girl from an embarrassing reply. Stephanette started out of sleep, and said, artlessly: “Ah, my God, mademoiselle, I dreamed that I was married to my poor Luquin, who had rescued us, and that he was having that wicked vagabond hanged.” “All I wish, my pretty girl,” said the Bohemian, with an insolent smile, “is that the very opposite of your dream may happen, which is usually the case. You can believe that such are my intentions concerning Captain Luquin.” “What do you want?” asked Erebus, impatiently, interrupting Hadji. “I have come for you. Pog-Reis wants you. He is waiting for you on board the _Red Galleon_.” “Tell Pog-Reis that I will not leave this chebec except to conduct Mlle, des Anbiez ashore. She has no other protector, and I will not abandon her.” The Bohemian, knowing the determined spirit of Erebus, preferred to have recourse to a lie to employing force to take him away from the young girls, and said to him: