What Monsieur had observed concerning Les Oliviers was absolutely correct, she replied. The proceeding alluded to was undoubtedly unheard-of, unparalleled, without precedent in the annals of that house--to which only persons of absolutely irreproachable character and assured position were admitted. Madame was filled with the profoundest compassion for Monsieur; her bosom was torn for him; she regretted from the profoundest depths of her being the necessity of inflicting upon him an immeasurable pain. But she was woman; more than that, she asserted brokenly and with deep sobs, she was _mother_. One's children were one's life. What mother could view the silent, corroding anguish, could witness the perfidious betrayal of a child, a guileless, a trusting, an adored child, unmoved? What fiend in human shape could stand by in icy indifference and look upon the gradual, irreparable blighting of a cherished daughter's life, the slow destruction of her every hope, the corrosive agony perpetually gnawing at her breaking heart, the withering, in short, of the pure and maidenly flower of her youth, and raise no hand, utter no word, in her defence? Madame Bontemps was the unfortunate possessor neither of a bosom of adamant nor of a heart of granite; she possessed, on the contrary, those of a mother; with a sacred fury and a noble indignation she chased from her hearth the serpent whose envenomed tooth had poisoned the happiness of her child and ruined the tranquillity of a cheerful and affectionate family circle. That the serpent in question, whose wiles had been daily employed before her very eyes in beguiling the youthful and pardonably sensitive affections of M. Isidore from their lawful and pledged object, should be in effect the wife of Monsieur, was for him, she admitted, a circumstance of supreme misfortune and profoundly to be deplored, and upon which, from the depths of her woman's breast, she offered him condolences of the deepest and most sincere nature. Here M. Bontemps, profoundly touched by his wife's eloquence, dashed his cigarette despairingly to the floor, threw out his arms with gestures of despair, and groaned aloud, while Madame sought relief in tears. "Ma fille, ma Geneviève," she wailed, wildly smiting her breast, "mon enfant!"