"Your daughter,—your own child! Maurice de Mesmai of Quinsay," replied the old priest with solemn energy; while the dark features of the cuirassier became purple and then deadly pale, and his eyes wandered from the faces of Ronald and Maria to the calm features of the curate, whose arm he grasped, as, with emphatic sternness and in a tone something very like consternation, he answered,—
"My daughter? Impossible! What have you dared to tell me, old man?'
"Truth, truth! as I shall answer to Heaven, when all men shall stand at the tribunal to be judged on the great day which is to come. I tell you truth,—she is your daughter."
"Her mother?" asked the dragoon, bending forward his dark eyes, as if he would look searchingly into the very soul of the curate. "Her mother—"
"Was Justine Rosat,—the lily of Besançon."
"Poor Justine!" exclaimed the other, covering his face for a moment with his hand. "And, Monsieur le Curé, you are—"
"François Rosat, her father, and grandsire of this poor orphan."
"What! the gardener at my jovial old château of Quinsay, on the banks of the Doubs? Impossible! he was destroyed when I blew up the hall, with all the base republican mechanics who filled it."
"Monsieur, I am he," replied the curate.
Maria, with her hands crossed on her bosom, knelt at the feet of De Mesmai weeping bitterly, and imploring him, if he was really her father, to speak to her, to look upon her. But the devil-may-care-spirit of the true Parisian roué and libertine was not at all subdued: he turned from her to Ronald, who had been listening in silence and wonder.