Over this she ponders and frets incessantly, and, in the midst of her magnificent surroundings, she carefully conceals the grief she feels at finding herself deprived of this blessing.[77]
In consequence, she was naturally inclined to lend a favourable ear to the temptation offered her by a husband whom, besides, she would not for all the world displease,[78] and for whom her complaisance went so far as to help in the concealment of his vices,[79] even to the extent of uncomplainingly sacrificing not only her tastes and her health, but also her warmest and most legitimate affections.[80]
The crime once committed, she soon looked upon the wrong as irreparable, and from that time a false sense of honour, a deadened conscience, made it appear a duty to abstain from a revelation as degrading as it was unavailing.
CONCLUSION
Possibility, presumptions, relations of facts, statements by those who tell of what they have seen and heard; the absence of any interested motive for their assertions; such are the foundations, the elements of certainty, and it is by their means that two important facts have been proved: first, that of the exchange between the jailer Chiappini and the Comte de Joinville; secondly, that of the identity of the Comte with the late Duc d’Orléans-Egalité.
So I know who is my brother; I can name my mother; at last I belong to a family. Alas! shall I be for ever excluded, repulsed, from its bosom?
Shall I always be conspicuous as a witness to the truth that the Divine vengeance sometimes avenges the criminal’s guilt even upon his unfortunate posterity?