"De Brumpt, you mean."
"It would be unjust to reproach me with a crime that antedated my birth by some three or four hundred years, and with which I had nothing to do."
"You need tell me nothing more; I know your story, and I also know what you have come for."
The young girl sank upon her knees, and, as she lifted her head and clasped hands, the hood of her mantle fell upon her shoulders and fully disclosed a face of surpassing loveliness. Her beautiful blond hair was parted in the middle of her head, and fell in long curls on either side, framing a face of perfect oval. Her forehead, of a clear white, was made still more dazzling by eyes, eyebrows and lashes of black; the nose was straight but sensitive, moving with the slight trembling of her cheeks, which showed traces of the many tears she had shed; her lips, half parted, seemed sculptured from rose coral, and behind them her teeth gleamed faintly like pearls. Her neck, as white as snow and as smooth as satin, was lost in the folds of a black dress that came close up to the throat, but whose folds revealed the graceful outlines of her body. She was magnificent.
"Yes, yes," said Schneider, "you are beautiful, and you have the beauty, the grace, and the seduction of the accursed races. But we are not Asiatics, to be seduced by the beauty of a Helen or a Roxelane. Your father conspires, your father is guilty, your father must die."
The young girl uttered a cry as though the words had been a dagger that had pierced her heart.
"Oh! no! my father is not a conspirator," she cried.
"If he is not a conspirator, why did he emigrate?"
"He emigrated because, belonging to the Prince de Condé, he thought he ought to follow him into exile; but, faithful to his country as he was to his prince, he would not fight against France, and during his two years of exile his sword has hung idle in its scabbard."
"What was he doing in France, and why did he cross the Rhine?"