The marquis read the note. He recognized on the other sheets the detested handwriting of his wife's lover, his villainous friend. He looked at Chaffin and said: "So it was you!"--Then he took two steps towards him with an expression so threatening that the unhappy wretch--ah! he well deserved that title at that cruel moment!--fell on his knees, crying, "Pardon!" The doctor rushed between his father and M. de Claviers. The marquis stopped, plainly struggling against himself, to refrain from revenging himself with his own hands. At last, pointing to the door, he commanded: "Go! go, I say!" in so imperative a tone that his former secretary, still on his knees, crawled towards the door. His nerveless fingers had difficulty in opening it. He escaped at last, while Landri said to the horrified Pierre, who no longer needed to have any one tell him the truth about his father:-- "Follow him. Do not leave him alone." "You're afraid that he'll kill himself," said M. de Claviers, when the door had closed on the two men. "I suppose that he played that comedy for you," he continued with a bitter smile. "It is not he, but his son, who should not be left alone. Cowards live. It's the men of courage who think of suicide in the presence of disgrace. And when one does not believe in God! On that boy's account, I tried to control myself. I could not do it.--But no," he continued, with a fierce energy wherein the stern inheritance of a warlike race reappeared. "We are too much afraid of suffering and of causing others to suffer. The grief of the sons is the redemption of the fathers in this world and the next. We must learn to atone for the sins that we did not commit, as we profit by virtues that we never had." He had spoken as if to himself, and he seemed to have forgotten the existence of Landri, who watched him pace the floor, silent now. Chaffin's note and Jaubourg's three letters still lay on the table, where he had left them when he rushed upon the traitor. The young man trembled lest, when he emerged from that fit of excited meditation, the sight of those sheets should increase the smart of the wound from which his noble heart was bleeding. So that he was amazed by the calm tone in which M. de Claviers, upon returning to himself and spying the papers, said to him, pointing to them as he spoke: "Do as you did before!" He resumed his walk while the proofs of the terrible secret were being consumed. At last, halting in front of Landri, he said to him:-- "You have done what you promised. It is well. It is very well. I am relieved of a horrible weight. We are entitled to think that all the letters are destroyed. The Chaffins will not talk. They cannot talk. Our honor is safe, thanks to you. Once more, it is well, and I thank you."