"You seduced Bathilde, Landry's daughter; you deceived a young girl, innocent until then. She put faith in your promises and your oaths. And after ruining her, you abandoned her in the most dastardly manner when she was cursed and cast out by her parents!—Comte Léodgard, was it because you belong to an illustrious house, because you bear a noble name, that you deemed yourself entitled to bring misfortune and infamy upon a family of lower rank, a family which had as its possessions only honor?—Answer me!"
Profound silence reigned for a moment in the hall. Landry toyed with the hilt of his old sabre with a trembling hand. Bathilde scarcely breathed. Ambroisine waited anxiously for what was to follow; and all the other witnesses of the scene seemed to share her anxiety.
After a brief interval, Léodgard, who had turned his head away to avoid Bathilde's glance, said, trying to give an ironical accent to his voice:
"Really, monsieur le marquis, I did not expect to be haled thus before a court of honor, for an act in which, I must confess, I had not detected so many crimes, so many terrible disasters!—From the way in which you reprove what is, after all, only a peccadillo, a youthful escapade, one would think that I had done something that no gentleman had ever dared to do before! By Notre-Dame! he who thinks that has but little acquaintance with our young noblemen of to-day! There is not one of them who has not been guilty of five or six offences of the sort for which you reproach me!—But, far from blushing and repenting of them, they, one and all, pride themselves thereon! And since when has it been forbidden to us young men of the court to make love to the petites bourgeoises, to the young girls of the lower orders? After all, if they wish to remain virtuous, it is their business not to listen to us! But, instead of that, they incite our advances by their glances, their allurements! They would be sorely disappointed if we did not try to seduce them!"
Landry uttered a sort of hollow growl which presaged a storm on the point of bursting. Bathilde hid her face in her hands, and Ambroisine squeezed her father's arm, murmuring:
"How horrible! how shameful!—Oh, no! she did none of that!"
But the old marquis rose and interrupted Léodgard, exclaiming in a voice of thunder:
"Enough, monsieur, enough! your defence is simply an additional insult to the woman you have outraged!—We know that there are women who invite seduction, who even provoke it; they do not deserve our pity! But do you dare to place this unhappy creature here among those girls who have neither modesty nor morals?—In that case, why did you need, in order to seduce her, to employ the most sacred oaths, to write her that you would take her for your wife?"
"I!—write such things to her!"
"See, here is your letter; do you deny your own signature?"