“That brother was my friend,—my dearest, my only friend, Charles de Meudon!”
“What! and did you know poor Charles?”
But I could not speak; the tears ran fast down my cheeks as I thought of all his sorrows,—sorrows far greater than ever he had told me.
“Poor Marie!” said the general, as he wiped a tear from his eye; “few have met such an enemy as she did. Every misfortune of her life has sprung from one hand: her brother's, her lover's death, were both his acts.”
“Lâon Guichard! And who is he? or how could he have done these things?”
“Methinks you might yourself reply to your own question.”
“I! How could that be? I know him not.”
“Yes, but you do. Lâon Guichard is Mehée de la Touche!”
Had a thunderbolt fallen between us I could not have felt more terror. That name, spoken but twice or thrice in my hearing, had each time brought its omen of evil.
It was the same with whose acquaintance Marie de Meudon charged me in the garden of Versailles; the same who brought the Chouans to the guillotine, and had so nearly involved myself in their ruin; and now I heard of him as one whose dreadful life had been a course of perfidy and crime,—one who blasted all around him, and scattered ruin as he went.