"Imprecations on my head!" murmured Sarah, concealing her face in her hands, as if she had feared the light of day.
"Yes," cried Rudolph, "imprecations on you! for it is your abandonment of this child which has caused all these horrors. Maledictions on you! for when, rescuing her from this filth, I had placed her in a peaceable retreat, you had her torn away by your miserable accomplices. Maledictions on you! for this again placed her in the power of Jacques Ferrand."
At this name, Rudolph stopped suddenly. He shuddered as if he had pronounced it for the first time. It was because he now pronounced this name for the first time since he had known that his daughter was the victim of that monster. The features of the prince assumed then a frightful expression of rage and hatred. Silent, immovable, he remained, as it were, crushed by this thought—that the murderer of his child still lived. Sarah, notwithstanding her increasing weakness, was struck by his sinister look; she feared for herself.
"Alas! what is the matter with you?" she murmured, in a trembling voice.
"Is it not enough of suffering?"
"No; it is not enough!" cried Rudolph, responding to his own thoughts. "I have never before experienced—never! such a desire for vengeance—a thirst for blood—a calm, reflecting rage! When I did not know that one of the victims of the monster was my own child, I said to myself, the death of this man will be sterile, while his life will be fertile, if, to redeem it, he accept the conditions which I impose. To condemn him to be charitable, to expiate his crimes, appeared to me just; and then, life without gold, life without sensuality, would be for him a long and double torture. But it is my child whom he has delivered to all the horrors of infamy and misery! but it is my daughter whom he has murdered! I will kill this man!"
And the prince sprung toward the door.
"Where are you going? Do not abandon me!" cried Sarah, half rising, and extending toward Rudolph her supplicating hands. "Do not leave me alone! I am dying!"
"Alone! no! no! I leave you with the specter of your daughter, whose death you have caused!"
Sarah, frantic, threw herself on her knees, uttering a cry of affright, as if an alarming phantom had appeared to her. "Pity! I die!"
"Die, then, accursed!" answered Rudolph, frightful with rage. "Now I must have the life of your accomplice, for it is you who delivered your daughter to her executioner!"