Naundorff's face was almost transfigured. He looked twenty years younger. He seemed to have lost consciousness of his past sufferings. Joy obliterated sorrow and his lips were wreathed in smiles.
"My friends," he was saying, "I reproach myself for having doubted of human justice. Early or late, the human heart turns to good as the body to earth. This is the happiest moment of my unhappy life. I am about to receive a great consolation and greatly did I require it, for on reaching Paris, my old wounds were re-opened. To return here after so many years and with such a record fastened to my name! I have visited my parents' prison. Yes, I have had the courage to do so. I am a man of memories. The tower has already been demolished. What haste to obliterate my past! In the remainder of the building a convent has been established, to which I have been refused admittance. I was brave enough to walk on the bloody ground whereon my mother—"
Amélie rose and threw her arms around her father's neck.
"Why do I dwell on this theme?" he asked, resuming his radiant expression. "Has not my destiny changed aspect? In spite of what we have suffered on the voyage, in spite of what you, my loved Amélie, have suffered, I say: 'Blessed be the hour in which I left London! Blessed the inspiration whereby I saved that wretch! These things have been registered to my credit. Blessed the faith I had in the one person who can save me and whose heart throbs at the sound of my name!'"
He fervently crossed his hands in an attitude of prayer.
"It is my duty to announce to you the secret of my happiness. You have cast your lives into my cause and braved even death. But danger has at last ceased; and the sun has chased away the clouds. I am happy, happy. O how strange that word sounds on my lips!"
Louis Pierre fixed on Naundorff a penetrating look and said:
"Monseigneur, we are waiting to know in what that happiness consists—"
"Listen, listen. This morning at about eleven o'clock a most affable gentleman brought me a message in answer to a letter I had written,—can you guess to whom?"
Then with his heart in his voice, he added: