“Be a man,” continued the priest. “Where is your energy? To live is to suffer.”
He listened, but did not seem to understand. “Live!” he murmured; “why should I live since she is dead?”
His eyes gleamed so strangely that the abbe was alarmed. “If he does not weep, he will most certainly lose his reason!” thought the priest. Then in a commanding voice he added aloud, “You have no right to despair; you owe a sacred duty to your child.”
The same remembrance which had given Marie-Anne strength to hold even death itself at bay for a moment, saved Maurice from the dangerous trance into which he was sinking. He shuddered as if he had received an electric shock, and springing from his chair, “That is true,” he cried. “Take me to my child!”
“Not just now, Maurice; wait a little.”
“Where is it? Tell me where it is.”
“I cannot; I do not know.”
An expression of unspeakable anguish stole over Maurice’s face, and in a broken voice he said: “What! you don’t know? Did she not confide in you?”
“No. I suspected her secret. I, alone——”
“You, alone! Then the child is perhaps dead. Even if it is living, who can tell where it is?”