"Will you alone," he asked sadly, "be pitiless?"
"We no longer have the right to punish," don Jaime said in a hollow voice.
Dominique hung his head and maintained a sullen silence, his mother approached him and gently seized his arm: at this contact the young man gave a start.
"What do you want, mother?" he asked.
"I have pardoned this man," she said imploringly, in a gentle voice.
"Mother," he replied with an accent of implacable hatred: "when I cursed this man, it was my father who spoke by my lips, and dictated the malediction from the bloody tomb in which this wretch laid him: the indelible brand will cling to him, and God will ask of him as of the first fratricide: Cain, what hast thou done with thy brother?"
At these words, uttered in an awful tone, don Horacio sank senseless on the floor.
Don Jaime and doña María recoiled from him with horror. He remained lying on the ground for some minutes, and the persons present did not make a movement to succour him: at length doña María leaned over him.
"Stay mother!" the young man exclaimed, "Do not touch that wretch! The contact would sully you!"
"I have forgiven him!" she said feebly.