"You are the woman, madame, who swore to accomplish my son's ruin, and you have come doubtless to gloat over my despair; for my poor Albert is dead! he breathed his last in my arms, only a moment after he was brought home. But what had that unhappy boy done to you that you should be so bent upon his destruction?"
"He, monsieur—he had done nothing. Indeed, I could have loved him well, if he had not been your son; but by depriving you of this last child, the remaining fruit of your marriage, I have avenged my sister—my poor Marie!"
"Marie!"
"Yes, monsieur; Marie Delbart, the young seamstress whom you seduced before your marriage. She had a sister, ten years younger than herself, whom a distant relative had taken with him to America."
"Marie must sometimes have spoken to you of that young sister, who loved her as a daughter loves her mother, and who wept bitterly when she was forced to leave her. Well, monsieur, before she died, Marie wrote me a letter in which she told me the story of her misfortunes, begging me, if I ever returned to France, to do my utmost to find her child and avenge her on her unworthy seducer. That letter was not delivered to me until I had attained my majority; that was in accordance with Marie's wish; but I was then married to a wealthy planter, Monsieur Baldimer, who was much older than I, but had raised me to a position I had never dared to hope for. I should have liked to return to France at once, to carry out my sister's wishes, but my husband was unwilling to take the journey, and I had to wait. About fifteen months ago, Monsieur Baldimer died; I turned all my property into cash and returned to France, my native land, having taken an oath to fulfil Marie's last wishes. But to find her child was almost impossible. She had remembered, however, the name of the midwife who attended her when she became a mother, and who must have aided you to carry out your shameful determination to send your son to the Foundling Hospital. By dint of careful searching, I succeeded some time ago in finding that woman, who is now very old."
Monsieur Vermoncey gazed at Madame Baldimer with an anxious expression, and faltered:
"You have found her! Ah! I have sought her in vain! Well, madame—go on—that unfortunate child?——"
"She remembered all the details of the affair. My sister was then living at Saint-Cloud. When she carried the child away, ostensibly to a nurse, but really in accordance with your orders, to Paris, to be brought up with all those unhappy creatures who have no family, that woman, thinking that there ought to be some way of recognizing the child, if you should ever want to see him again, burned a little cross on his left forearm, and wrote on a slip of paper: 'His name is Paul de Saint-Cloud.'"
At those words, Sans-Cravate started in surprise and muttered: