“If he should be my son, however; if he should be innocent! Ah, this doubt is intolerable! And I who would not move from here,—I who have done nothing for him,—I might have done every thing at first. It would have been easy for me to obtain a change of venue to free him from this Galpin, formerly his friend, and now his enemy.”
M. de Boiscoran was right when he said that his wife’s pride was unmanageable. And still, as cruelly wounded as woman well could be, she now suppressed her pride, and, thinking only of her son, remained quite humble. Drawing from her bosom the letter which Jacques had sent to her the day before she left Sauveterre, she handed it to her husband, saying,—
“Will you read what our son says?”
The marquis’s hand trembled as he took the letter; and, when he had torn it open, he read,—
“Do you forsake me too, father, when everybody forsakes me? And yet I have never needed your love as much as now. The peril is imminent. Every thing is against me. Never has such a combination of fatal circumstances been seen before. I may not be able to prove my innocence; but you,—you surely cannot think your son guilty of such an absurd and heinous crime! Oh, no! surely not. My mind is made up. I shall fight to the bitter end. To my last breath I shall defend, not my life, but my honor. Ah, if you but knew! But there are things which cannot be written, and which only a father can be told. I beseech you come to me, let me see you, let me hold your hand in mine. Do not refuse this last and greatest comfort to your unhappy son.”
The marquis had started up.
“Oh, yes, very unhappy indeed!” he cried.
And, bowing to his wife, he said,—
“I interrupted you. Now, pray tell me all.”
Maternal love conquered womanly resentment. Without a shadow of hesitation, and as if nothing had taken place, the marchioness gave her husband the whole of Jacques’s statement as he had made it to M. Magloire.