"You did not perceive her in the tavern where the Slasher breathed his last. She was among the women who surrounded him."
"Oh, now!" said Rudolph, dejectedly, "I understand: already struck with terror by the murder of the Slasher, you thought there was something providential in this dreadful meeting."
"It is but too true, my father. At the sight of the Ogress I felt a mortal shudder. It seemed to me that, under her look, my heart, until then radiant with happiness and hope, was suddenly frozen. Yes; to meet this woman at the moment when the Slasher was dying and repeating the words 'Heaven is just,' this seemed to me a providential reproof of my proud forgetfulness of the past, which I ought to expiate by humiliation and repentance."
"But the past was laid upon you; you can answer for it before high heaven! You were constrained, intoxicated, unfortunate child. Once precipitated, in spite of yourself, in this abyss, you could not leave it, notwithstanding your remorse, your terror your despair, thanks to the atrocious indifference of that society of which you were the victim. You saw yourself forever chained in that cavern; the chance which placed you in my path could alone have dragged you from it."
"And then, my child, as your father has told you, you were the victim, not the accomplice, of the infamy," cried Clémence.
"But to this infamy I have submitted, my mother," sadly rejoined Fleur-de-Marie; "nothing can annihilate these horrible recollections. They pursue me incessantly, no longer as formerly, in the midst of the peaceable inhabitants of a farm, or of the degraded women, my companions in Saint Lazare, but they pursue me even to this palace, peopled with the elite of Germany. They pursue me even to the arms of my father, even to the steps of his throne."
Fleur-de-Marie melted into tears. Rudolph and Clémence remained mute before this frightful expression of invincible remorse. They, too wept, for they felt the powerlessness of their consolations.
"Since then," resumed Fleur-de-Marie, drying her tears, "every moment of the day I say to myself, with bitter shame, 'I am honored, I am revered; the most eminent and most venerable surround me with respect; in sight of the whole court, the sister of an emperor has deigned to fasten the bandeau upon my head; yet I had lived in the mud of the city-have been spoken to familiarly by thieves and assassins!' Oh, father, forgive me! but the more my position is elevated, the more I have been struck with the profound degradation into which I had fallen. At each new homage which is rendered me, I feel myself guilty of a profanation. Think of it, oh, heaven! after having been what I have been to suffer old men to bow before me—to suffer noble young women, women justly respected, to feel themselves flattered to approach me—to suffer finally, that princesses, doubly august by age and their sacerdotal character should heap upon me favors and praises, is not this impious and sacrilegious? And then, if you knew, my father, what I have suffered—what I still suffer every day, in saying, 'If it should please God that the past should be known, with what merited scorn would she be treated who is now elevated so high. What a just—what a frightful punishment!'"
"But, unfortunate one, my wife and I, who know the past, are worthy of our rank, and we love, we adore you."
"You have for me the blind tenderness of a father and a mother."