"The old man, who was sitting in an armchair, repeated three times, like this: 'You do wrong, you do wrong, you do wrong, Rosette.'
"Mother sat up in bed. I can see her now, with her flushed cheeks and shining eyes; she loved me, in spite of everything; and she said: 'Then you do something for him, Philippe!' In speaking to him she called him 'Philippe' and me 'Auguste.'
"He began to shout like a madman: 'Do something for that loafer—that blackguard, that convict? never!'
"And he continued to call me names, as if he had done nothing else all his life but collect them.
"I was angry, but mother told me to hold my tongue, and she resumed: 'Then you must want him to starve, for you know that I leave no money.'
"Without being deterred, he continued: 'Rosette, I have given you thirty-five thousand francs a year for thirty years,—that makes more than a million. I have enabled you to live like a wealthy, a beloved, and I may say, a happy woman. I owe nothing to that fellow, who has spoiled our late years, and he will not get a cent from me. It is useless to insist. Tell him the name of his father, if you wish. I am sorry, but I wash my hands of him.'
"Then mother turned toward me. I thought: 'Good! now I'm going to find my real father—if he has money, I'm saved.'
"She went on: 'Your father, the Baron de Vilbois, is to-day the Abbé Vilbois, curé of Garandou, near Toulon. He was my lover before I left him for the Count!'
"And she told me all, excepting that she had deceived you about her pregnancy. But women, you know, never tell the whole truth."
Sneeringly, unconsciously, he was revealing the depths of his foul nature. With beaming face he raised the glass to his lips and continued: