“That voice is torturing Madame.”
“Ah! she is there!” exclaimed the baron.
He fell on his knees and burst into tears, crying out in a heart-rending voice: “In the name of Jesus dying on the cross, forgive, forgive me, for my daughter has suffered a thousand deaths!”
The old man fell forward on the floor so prone that the agitated spectators thought him dead. At that instant Madame de la Chanterie appeared like a spectre at the door of her room, against the frame of which she supported herself.
“In the name of Louis XVI. and Marie-Antoinette whom I see on their scaffold, in the name of Madame Elisabeth, in the name of my daughter and of yours, and for Jesus’ sake, I forgive you.”
Hearing those words the old man raised his head. “It is the vengeance of angels!” he said.
Monsieur Joseph and Monsieur Nicolas raised him and led him to the courtyard; Godefroid went to fetch a carriage, and when they put the old man into it Monsieur Nicolas said to him gravely:—
“Do not return here, monsieur; the power of God is infinite, but human nature has its limits.”
On that day Godefroid was admitted to the order of the Brotherhood of Consolation.