"But I can do so at once," said Rodolph, interrupting Louise. "This crime alone was wanting to complete the heavy calendar of that man's offences. Accuse not your daughter, Morel, of seeking to deceive you. Tell me, Louise, when you made your meal, before ascending to your chamber, did you not remark something peculiar in the taste of the wine given you to drink? Try and recollect this circumstance." After reflecting a short time, Louise replied: "Yes, I do indeed remember," answered she, "that the wine and water left for me as usual had a somewhat bitter taste; but I did not pay much attention to it, because the housekeeper would frequently, when spitefully inclined, amuse herself with throwing salt or pepper into what I drank." "But, on the day you were describing, your wine had a bitter taste?" "It had, sir, but not sufficiently so to prevent my drinking it; and I attributed it to the wine being turned." Morel, with fixed eye and haggard look, listened both to the questions of Rodolph and the answers of Louise without appearing to understand to what they tended. "And before falling asleep on your chair, did not your head seem unusually heavy, and your limbs weary?" "Oh, yes, sir, I felt a fullness and throbbing in my temples, an icy coldness seemed to fill my veins, and a feeling of unusual discomfort oppressed me." "Wretch, villainous wretch!" exclaimed Rodolph. "Are you aware, Morel, what this man made your poor child take in her wine?" The artisan gazed at Rodolph without replying to his question. "His accomplice, the housekeeper, had mingled in Louise's drink some sort of stupefying drug, most probably opium, by which means both the bodily and mental powers of your unfortunate daughter were completely paralysed for several hours; and when she awoke from this lethargic state it was to find herself dishonoured and disgraced." "Ah, now," exclaimed Louise, "my misfortune is explained. You see, dear father, I am less guilty than you thought me. Father! dear, dear father! look upon me, bestow one little look of pity and of pardon on your poor Louise!" But the glance of the lapidary was fixed and vacant; his honest mind could not comprehend the idea of so black, so monstrous a crime as that ascribed to the notary, and he gazed with blank wonder at the words he heard, as though quite unable to affix any meaning to them. And besides, during the latter part of the discourse, his intellect became evidently shaken, his ideas became a shapeless, confused mass of wandering recollections; a mere chaotic mass of griefs and sorrows possessed his brain, and he sank into a state of mental prostration, which is to intellect what darkness is to the sight,--the formidable symptoms of a weakened brain. After a pause of some length, Morel replied, in a low, hasty tone: