"Why, what in the name of heaven has Leoni done," I demanded, terrified and appalled by his manner and his language, "that you assume the right to speak of him in this way?"
"Do you doubt my right, madame? Do you wish me to tell you why Leoni, who is personally brave,—that is beyond question,—and who is the best swordsman that I know, has never thought fit to pick a quarrel with me, who never touched a sword in my life, and who drove him out of Paris with a word, out of Brussels with a glance?"
"That is inconceivable," I said, in dire distress.
"Is it possible that you don't know whose mistress you are?" continued Henryet earnestly; "has no one ever told you the marvellous adventures of Chevalier Leoni? have you never blushed for having been his accomplice and for having fled with a swindler after robbing your father's shop?"
I uttered a cry of anguish and hid my face in my hands; then I raised my head and exclaimed with all my strength:
"That is false! I never was guilty of such a despicable act! Leoni is no more capable of it than I am. We had not travelled forty leagues on the way to Geneva when Leoni stopped in the middle of the night, asked for a box, and put all the jewels in it to send them back to my father."
"Are you quite sure that he did that?" inquired Henryet with a contemptuous laugh.
"I am sure of it!" I cried; "I saw the box, I saw Leoni put the diamonds into it."
"And you are sure that the box didn't accompany you all the rest of your journey? you are sure that it wasn't unpacked at Venice?"
These words cast such a dazzling gleam of light into my mind, that I could not avoid seeing what it disclosed. I suddenly remembered what I had previously tried in vain to remember: the first occasion on which my eyes had made the acquaintance of that fatal box. At that moment the three times that I had seen it were perfectly clear in my mind and linked themselves together logically to force me to an irresistible conclusion: the first, the night we passed in the mysterious château, when I saw Leoni put the diamonds in the box; the second, the last night at the Swiss chalet, when I saw Leoni mysteriously disinter the treasure he had entrusted to the earth; the third, the second day of our stay in Venice, when I had found the empty box and the diamond pin on the floor with the packing material. The visit of Thaddeus the Jew, and the five hundred thousand francs which, according to the conversation I had overheard between Leoni and his friends, had been advanced by him at the time of our arrival in Venice, coincided perfectly with the memories of that morning. I wrung my hands, then raised them toward heaven and cried, speaking to myself: