"However that may be, my friend, frightened by these rumors, I set out for Paris. Besides, it costs me too much to live far from you in these terrible times. The reasons for our separation were the hope of allaying the passion of our daughter for that young Lebrenn, and your lively desire to shield me from the spectacle of the insurrections, the popular passions which were about to sweep over Paris. But our principal aim has not been attained. Charlotte persists in her determination to remain unmarried or to wed that ironsmith. She writes to him and receives his letters. So, then, whether she be at Paris or at Lyons, she will be neither nearer nor further from the scene of her love-affair. And finally, by the very fact that you are exposed to dangers of all sorts, my place is beside you, my friend. I have, then, resolved to leave you no longer. I also am much alarmed on my brother's score. Here it is more than a month that I haven't heard from him. Can you tell me what has become of him?" "I know that he was denounced as a suspect; he probably has remained in Paris, where he is in hiding, and conspiring in favor of the monarchy. I do not in the least doubt it." "What do you tell me! My brother denounced! My God! In these times such an accusation is a thing of terror--it may lead to the scaffold!" "No doubt. But why doesn't he consent to resign himself, as I have, to howl with the wolves, and roar with the tigers?" "Poor Hubert," replied Madam Desmarais in tears. "In the midst of the mortal dangers which he runs, he thinks of my birthday; he sends me a token of his brotherly affection." And the attorney's wife, casting her eyes towards the box in the corner, added, "Dear, good brother! How sensible I am of this new proof of his affection!" "If he truly loved you, he would not risk causing you the greatest chagrin, and compromising me into the bargain!" "My friend, I can not listen to reproaches against my brother, when he is exposed to such grave perils--" "And whose fault is it, if not his own, due to his own violent and obstinate character? He abhors, says he, the excesses of the Revolution! Alas, I also execrate them--yet I feign to applaud them. That will at least do to insure our repose and steer clear of the guillotine. Thus, to-morrow, the members of the Convention will hale before the bar the unfortunate Louis XVI, he will be examined in due form, they will give him his trial, and he will be condemned to death. And well, I shall vote for death." "O, my God!" murmured Madam Desmarais in cold fear. "My husband a regicide!" "But how can I escape the fatal necessity?" "Let the fatality fall, then!" answered Madam Desmarais mournfully, her voice broken with sobs. "Let us go on," said advocate Desmarais after a long silence, during which his agitation slowly got the better of itself, "let us go on. Our daughter is then still infatuated with this Lebrenn?"