"Stop!" said Leoni, seizing a letter which the marquis was about to burn with the rest. "I saw Juliette's family name." "It is a letter to Madame Ruyter," said the marquis. "Let us see:" "'MADAME, "'If it is not too late, if you did not start at once on receiving the letter I wrote yesterday summoning you to your daughter, do not start. Wait at home for her or come to meet her as far as Strasbourg; I will send for you when we reach there. I shall be there with Mademoiselle Ruyter in a few days. She has decided to fly from her seducer's dishonor and ill treatment. I have just received a note in which she announces this determination. I am to see her to-night to agree upon the time of our departure. I will leave all my business in order to make the most of her present disposition, in which her lover's flatteries may not leave her forever. The empire that he has over her is still immense. I fear that her passion for that wretch is eternal, and that her regret for having left him will make you both shed many tears hereafter. Be indulgent and kind to her; that is your proper rôle as her mother, and you can easily play it. For my part, I am rough-mannered, and my indignation finds expression more readily than my compassion. I wish I were more persuasive; but I cannot be more lovable, and it is my destiny not to be loved. "'PAUL HENRYET.'" "This proves to you, O my friend!" said the marquis in a mocking tone, as he held the letter in the flame of the candle, "that your wife is faithful and that you are the most fortunate of husbands." "Poor woman!" said Leoni, "and poor Henryet! He would have made her happy! He would at least have respected and honored her! In God's name, what fatality drove her into the arms of a wretched adventurer, drawn to her by destiny from one end of the world to the other, when she had an honorable man's heart at her very hand. Blind child! why did you choose me?" "Charming!" said the marquis ironically. "I hope you will write some verses on this subject. A pretty epitaph for the man you massacred to-night would be, to my mind, in exceedingly good taste and altogether new." "Yes, I will write one for him," retorted Leoni, "and it will run like this: "'Here lies an honest man who tried to defend human justice against two scoundrels, and whom divine justice allowed them to murder.'" Thereupon, Leoni fell into a sorrowful reverie, during which he constantly muttered his victim's name: