"Will you, then, be insensible? will you refuse this last consolation to your child?" asked Rudolph. "If you think you owe me some return for the favors I have directed toward you, grant the prayer of your daughter."
After a moment of mournful silence, Morel answered, "Let us go."
"But where shall we go?" asked Rudolph; "your family is in the next room."
"Where shall we go?" cried the artisan, with bitter irony, "where shall we go? up there—up there, in the garret, alongside of the body of my child. The place is well chosen for this confession—is it not? Come—we will see if Louise will dare to lie in the sight of her sister. Come!" Morel went out precipitately, with a wild stare, without looking at Louise."
"Sir," whispered the officer to Rudolph, "do not prolong this interview. You said truly, his reason will not sustain it; just now his look was that of a madman."
"Alas! sir, I fear, like you, a terrible and new misfortune: I will shorten as much as possible the touching adieus." And Rudolph rejoined the artisan and his daughter.
CHAPTER II.
CONFESSION.
Dark and gloomy spectacle.
In the garret reposed, on the couch of the idiot, the corpse of the little child. An old piece of sheet covered it. Rudolph standing with his back to the wall, was painfully affected. Morel, seated on his work-bench, his head down, hands hanging; his looks, fixed, wild, were constantly bent on the bed where reposed the remains of the little Adele.