“You, on your knees, before me, madam?”
“Yes, old man,” replied the marchioness, in a supplicating tone, “yes, I am on my knees before you—and I beg, I implore you, for you hold in your hands the honor of one of the most ancient families in France—my past, my future life! Those papers are my heart, my soul—they are more than this—they are my name—the name of my forefathers—of my children—and you well know all that I have suffered to preserve that name unsullied. Do you believe that I had not a heart as other women have? the feelings of a lover, of a wife, and of a mother? Well! I have overcome them all, one by one, and the struggle has been long. I am twenty years younger than you are, old man, I am still in the prime of life, and you are on the verge of the grave. Look, then, upon these hairs; they are even whiter than your own.”
“What says she?” whispered Marguerite, who had softly crept to the door, and could see all that was passing in the inner room. “Gracious heaven!”
“Listen, listen, dear child,” said Paul, “it is the Lord who permits that all shall be thus revealed.”
“Yes, yes,” murmured Achard, who was becoming weaker every moment. “Yes, you doubted the goodness of the Lord, you had forgotten that he had forgiven the adulterous woman—”
“Yes, but when she met with Christ, men were about to cast stones at her—men, who for twenty generations have been accustomed to revere our name, to honor our family—did they but learn, that which, thank heaven! has heretofore been hidden from them—would hear it uttered with shame and with contempt. I have so much suffered, that God will pardon me—but man! men are so implacable, that they will not pardon—moreover, am I alone exposed to their insults—on either side, the cross I bear, have I not a child?—and is not the other that we speak of, the first-born? In the eyes of the law, is he not the son of the Marquis d’Auray? do you forget that he is the first-born, the head of the family? Do you not know, that in order to possess himself of the title, the estates, the fortune of the family of Auray, he has only to invoke the law? and then what would remain to Emanuel? The cross of the order of Malta—and to Marguerite?—a convent.”
“Oh! yes, yes,” whispered Marguerite, and stretching out her arms, toward the marchioness, “yes, a convent, in which I would pray for you, my mother.”
“Silence! silence!” whispered Paul.
“Oh! you know him not,” said Achard, whose voice was scarcely audible.
“No! but I know human nature,” replied the marchioness, “he may recover a name, he! who has no name—a fortune, he! who has no fortune. And do you believe he would renounce that fortune and that name.”