"Dear boy, if they lived, your father and sister whom you love so much, would we not have heard some news of them, even if it were impossible for them to come to us?" "You are right, good mother. But you presume that it would have been possible for them to have sent us some intelligence of their fate. May we not suppose, though, that father was thrown into some state prison, and that he was deprived of all communication with the outside? So sad a supposition has nothing strange in it." "In that case, my child, the prison would have proven your father's tomb, so frail was his health. We could not dare to hope that he would be able to surmount the rigors of his captivity." "But it might also be, good mother, that the hope of seeing us some day may have helped him to endure his sufferings." "Do not essay, dear boy, to raise in my heart hopes, which, deceived too soon, will but plunge me back again into despair. My dear husband is indeed lost to me, helas! As to your sister, we may well believe we shall never see her more. She also is lost to us. Without doubt she has sought in death a refuge from her anguish, since the fatal revelation of her earlier life to her fiance, Sergeant Maurice." "Nothing has come to light so far to confirm your apprehensions on the subject of these afflictions--dear, good mother--" "If my poor girl is not dead--what can have been her lot? I shudder even to think of it--misery, or dishonor!" "I do not wish, good mother, to hold out to you hopes, which, when deceived, will revive your sorrow and seriously compromise your health, perhaps your life. But I believe I can without danger accustom you to the idea that my sister still lives, and has not ceased to be worthy of your affection; and also that father, after having languished long years in a prison pit, may still recover his liberty, and that we may see him.--That is a hope in my heart which I would cause you to share. Follow well my reasoning--" "'Twould be too much happiness for me--I cannot believe it. And if I could believe it, I ask myself whether I have the strength to bear so much joy. Rapture can kill, as well as grief, my dear son." "And so, dear mother, if such events are to be told, I shall have recourse to roundabout methods to make you acquainted with such unhoped-for news. If it were about father--for example--I would say, that the victorious people penetrated into the Bastille to deliver the persons thrown into the dungeons, and that, among them, we found one who resembled father; that we seized the prison registrars and made them search in their registers for the records of a prisoner who was very dear to me, as it might have chanced that my father was among the number; that, in one of these registers, I read the date, 'April 22, 1783,' and right after it, 'No. 1297--incarcerated--upper tier--cell No. 18.'" "April 22, 1783," repeated Madam Lebrenn pensively. "That is the day after your father disappeared."