"Why should you know what she is charged with?" said Rodolph, moved by his distress. "Louise's innocence will be proved; the person who takes so great an interest in you will protect your daughter. Come, come! Courage, courage! This time Providence will not forsake you. Embrace your daughter, and you will soon see her again."
"M. le Commissaire," cried Morel, not attending to Rodolph, "you are going to deprive a father of his daughter without even naming the crime of which she is accused! Let me know all! Louise, why don't you speak?"
"Your daughter is accused of child-murder," said the magistrate.
"I—I—I—child-mur—I don't—you—"
And Morel, aghast, stammered incoherently.
"Your daughter is accused of having killed her child," said the commissary, deeply touched at this scene; "but it is not yet proved that she has committed this crime."
"Oh, no, I have not, sir! I have not!" exclaimed Louise, energetically, and rising; "I swear to you that it was dead. It never breathed,—it was cold. I lost my senses,—this is my crime. But kill my child! Oh, never, never!"
"Your child, abandoned girl!" cried Morel, raising his hands towards Louise, as if he would annihilate her by this gesture and imprecation.
"Pardon, father, pardon!" she exclaimed.
After a moment's fearful silence, Morel resumed, with a calm that was even more frightful: