For a moment he was overwhelmed with conflicting emotions. Although such a bitterness of resentment might seem puerile, after the lapse of so many years, his rage reached its height when he saw this letter, written by himself in the very intoxication of happiness, and full of those confidences of the soul which a man dares pour out only in the heart of a beloved wife, enclosed in one addressed to her seducer, when he realised that it had been read, perhaps laughed at, by his enemy, the Commander des Anbiez.
In his fury he could only think of the painful ridiculousness of his attitude in the eyes of that man, as he spoke with so much freedom, so much love, and so much idolatry, of a child which was not his, and of this wife who had so basely deceived him.
The deepest, the most agonising, the most incurable wounds are those which pain our heart and our self-love at the same time.
The very excess of his wrath, his burning thirst for vengeance, brought Pog back, so to speak, to his religious sentiment. He saw the hand of God in the strange chance which had thrown Erebus, the fruit of this criminal love, in his pathway.
He thrilled with a cruel joy at the thought that this unfortunate child, whose soul he had perverted, whom he had led in a way so fatal to all purity and happiness, would, perhaps, carry desolation and death into the Des Anbiez family.
He saw in this startling coincidence a terrible providential retribution.
His first thought was to go at once and assassinate Erebus, but, urged by a consuming curiosity, he desired to discover all the secrets of this guilty connection.
So he continued to read the letters contained in the casket. The next letter, written by Madame de Montreuil, was also addressed to the Commander des Anbiez.
Third Letter,
“December 14th, one o’clock in the morning.