"'MADAME,
"'If it is not too late, if you did not start at once on receiving the letter I wrote yesterday summoning you to your daughter, do not start. Wait at home for her or come to meet her as far as Strasbourg; I will send for you when we reach there. I shall be there with Mademoiselle Ruyter in a few days. She has decided to fly from her seducer's dishonor and ill treatment. I have just received a note in which she announces this determination. I am to see her to-night to agree upon the time of our departure. I will leave all my business in order to make the most of her present disposition, in which her lover's flatteries may not leave her forever. The empire that he has over her is still immense. I fear that her passion for that wretch is eternal, and that her regret for having left him will make you both shed many tears hereafter. Be indulgent and kind to her; that is your proper rôle as her mother, and you can easily play it. For my part, I am rough-mannered, and my indignation finds expression more readily than my compassion. I wish I were more persuasive; but I cannot be more lovable, and it is my destiny not to be loved.
"'PAUL HENRYET.'"
"This proves to you, O my friend!" said the marquis in a mocking tone, as he held the letter in the flame of the candle, "that your wife is faithful and that you are the most fortunate of husbands."
"Poor woman!" said Leoni, "and poor Henryet! He would have made her happy! He would at least have respected and honored her! In God's name, what fatality drove her into the arms of a wretched adventurer, drawn to her by destiny from one end of the world to the other, when she had an honorable man's heart at her very hand. Blind child! why did you choose me?"
"Charming!" said the marquis ironically. "I hope you will write some verses on this subject. A pretty epitaph for the man you massacred to-night would be, to my mind, in exceedingly good taste and altogether new."
"Yes, I will write one for him," retorted Leoni, "and it will run like this:
"'Here lies an honest man who tried to defend human justice against two scoundrels, and whom divine justice allowed them to murder.'"
Thereupon, Leoni fell into a sorrowful reverie, during which he constantly muttered his victim's name:
"Paul Henryet!" he said. "Twenty-two years old, twenty-four at most. A cold but handsome face. A rigid, upright character. Hatred of injustice. The uncompromising pride of honesty, and withal something tender and melancholy. He loved Juliette, he has always loved her. He fought against his passion to no purpose. I see by that letter that he loved her still, and that he would have worshipped her if he could have cured her. Juliette, Juliette! you might still have been happy with him, and I have killed him! I have robbed you of the man who might have comforted you; your only defender is no more, and you remain the victim of a bandit."
"Very fine!" said the marquis; "I wish that you might never move your lips without having a stenographer beside you to preserve all the noble and affecting things you say. For my part, I am going to bed. Good-night, my dear fellow; go to bed to your wife, but change your shirt first; for, deuce take me! you have Henryet's blood on your frill!"
The marquis left the room. Leoni, after a moment's irresolution, came to my bed, raised the curtain and looked at me. He saw that I was only drowsing under my bedclothes, and that my eyes were open and fixed upon him. He could not endure my livid face and fixed stare; he fell back with a cry of horror, and I called him several times in a weak, broken voice: "Murderer! murderer! murderer!"