"Ah, indeed!" replied Gabriel, with the same terrible calmness. "He is strictly just with me, then, and is keeping his word to me with great exactitude, I must confess. You must know, Monsieur le Gouverneur, that he swore to restore my father to me. He is restored to me: behold him! I recognize the fact that there was no undertaking to restore him to me alive." He laughed a harsh, unpleasant laugh. "Come, courage!" rejoined Monsieur de Sazerac. "It is time now to say adieu to him for whom you weep." "I am doing so, as you see, Monsieur." "Yes, but I mean that you really must leave this place at once. The air that we breathe here is not fit for human lungs, and a longer stay in this poisonous miasma might be very dangerous." "Here is a proof of it before our eyes," said Gabriel, pointing to the body of his father. "Come, come, we must be going!" replied the governor, taking the poor fellow's arm to force him away. "Yes, yes, I will follow you," said Gabriel; "but for God's sake, leave me here a few moments longer!" Monsieur de Sazerac made a sign of assent, and withdrew as far as the door, where the air was less noxious and heavy. Gabriel, on his knees by the side of the dead man, and with head bent and hands hanging at his side, remained mute and motionless for some moments, praying or dreaming. What said he to his dead father? Did he ask those lips, which Death's pitiless finger had closed too soon, for the solution of the enigma he was trying to unravel? Did he swear to the sainted victim that he would avenge him in this world, independently of God's vengeance in the world to come? Did he scan those already decomposing features, to conjecture what sort of man had been this father of his whom he now saw for the second time, and to dream of the peaceful and happy life that might have been in store for him under his watchful care? Did his thoughts dwell upon the past or the future; upon the affairs of this world, or the divine power of the Lord; upon vengeance or forgiveness? The subject of this sombre communion between a dead father and his son remained forever a secret between Gabriel and his God. Four or five minutes had passed; and breathing had become a painful and laborious task to these two men who had descended to these pestilential depths,--one in the performance of a holy duty, and the other led by an instinct of humanity. "Again, I beg you to come away," said the kind-hearted governor to Gabriel. "It is full time that we should go up into the air." "I am coming," said Gabriel, "I am coming." He took his father's icy hand in his, and kissed it tenderly; he leaned over his damp and decomposing forehead, and left a kiss there, too. All this passed without a tear. Alas! he could not weep. "_Au revoir_!" said he; "_au revoir_!" He rose with the same wonderfully calm and steadfast bearing and expression, whatever passions and emotions may have been rending his heart and soul.