"The train of my vain but happy thoughts was cruelly cut short by the apparition of a woman standing before me. Her appearance declared her to be sunk to the lowest ebb of misery and degraded destitution. She was tanned by exposure to the weather; bare-headed, bare-footed,—almost without covering, and bore in her arms a poor child, almost as wan and meagre as herself. _Ah, mon Dieu!_ how keenly at this distant time can my memory recall the agony of that terrible recognition. Oh, what a moment was that! Disguised as she was, I recognised her; but a mist overspread my vision, and I felt her fall into my open arms, although I could not for some minutes discern her. "’My father! oh, my father!’ said she. But, alas! her voice was not so sweet as of old. "’Justine, I forgive you,’ was my answer. ’Come again to my bosom: the past shall be forgotten.’ "She sunk down between my knees upon the earth, and lay motionless and still. Monsieur, I will not protract this intrusive story of my griefs. She was dead! she had expired at that moment—the kindness of my forgiveness had killed her! Unrequited love, unkindness, sorrow, shame, and misery had wrought their worst upon her,—she was destroyed! De Mesmai had taken her to Italy, and there, ruthlessly abandoning her for some new victim, she was left to find her way as she best could to Besançon, to place in my charge the infant to which she had given birth on the way. The child of De Mesmai is the Maria to whom he behaved so insolently to-night. Two days afterwards the poor polluted lily of Besançon was laid in her mother’s grave; and as I strewed the fresh flowers on the green turf which covered her, I knelt down upon it and solemnly swore a vow,—a vow at once terrible and impious,—to seek revenge upon her destroyer! "I joined one of those secret bands or societies then so numerous in France, composed of men who were desperate by their characters and fortunes, and the sworn enemies of kings and of nobility. I longed for desperate vengeance, and the hour for glutting it seemed at hand. A bloody standard was soon to wave over France, and destiny had pointed out that, like your own Stuarts, the Bourbons were a doomed race. The spirit of revolution and destruction was soon to sweep over my country, blighting and blasting it like the simoom of the African desert; and, eager as I was for vengeance on De Mesmai, I hailed the approaching tumult with joy, and entered into the wildest schemes of the most savage republicans and heaven-daring atheists. So eagerly did I attend the taverns of Besançon to hear the news from Paris, that the little innocent confided by Justine to my charge was quite neglected. My garden became a wilderness; I became sullen and morose, and forgot even to hang fresh flowers, as had been my custom daily, on the grave of Justine.