Alas! she had scarcely known her father. A widower very soon after the birth of his daughter, he had been obliged to entrust her to the care of pious and devout women. She had scarcely ever tasted of the delights of home. Geneviève often tried, in vain, to recall the sound of her mother’s voice. How sad it was! She had never felt on her heart the caressing warmth of an ever-present affection. Isolation, in the midst of strangers, kind and benevolent though they were, had been her lot, right to the day on which death had broken the slender bond which still attached her to her father. And now what a sorrowful end, in this catastrophe, at once stupefying and terrible, which left her an orphan, and filled her mind with thoughts of violence and massacre! She had not even the supreme consolation of thinking that the one she mourned had had a calm and peaceful death. As a soldier, he had not fallen on the field of battle; as a _savant_, he had not succumbed, a victim to his investigations. In a base and cowardly fashion, he had been assassinated by bandits. She heard the Minister telling her that she might rely on his protection. Stammering out her thanks, and blinded by tears, she left the room with Madame Baradier, almost heart-broken at being made to understand more vividly, from the expressions of condolence addressed to her, the extent of her loss. The Minister, on leaving the room in his turn, found General de Trémont’s servant awaiting him in the antechamber. He looked with interest at the latter’s intelligent and energetic countenance. “Well, my poor Baudoin, this is a great loss for us.” “It is a great crime, General.” “They had sent you away, my good fellow; but for that, all this would not have happened.” “Ah, General, it is always the fair sex who ruin everything!” “Come, come! Don’t say anything more on the subject.” “Pardon me, General. I do not mention it from lack of deference for my poor master, but if attempts are not made to find the scoundrel, the woman who controlled the whole affair, nothing will be discovered, and my master will remain unavenged.” “Do you know the woman?” “Ah! If I had known her, I, too, should have been dead!” Baradier, Graff, and the Minister looked at one another. What Baudoin had just said was so clear a confirmation of Baradier’s fears, concerning his son, that the threatening power of the mysterious woman instantly forced itself on the Minister’s thoughts. He was already so well acquainted personally, and through his predecessors, with these fortune-hunters, always in quest of a speculation or intrigue to work out, or a secret to be stolen, from the sellers of crosses of honour, to searchers of official desks. He could have named several of them. And the experience of the past: all these acts of imprudence and folly, were there to prove the truth of what the simple and devoted Baudoin now said. The Minister continued—