"I take no part. I speak for your own good. If a woman as frail and sensitive as you are yields to the promptings of a hate so overwhelming, a time comes when she cannot, if she would, control them or rule herself.... When voices sound in her ears, urging her to deeds of violence, and she cannot silence them by any prayers.... Then she goes away into a strange dim country peopled with shadows—lovely or queer, strange or awful. And that is the country of Madness, where live the insane.... Even those who love her as I—as your friends and your husband love you!—can never reach her there!"
The pleading seemed to touch her. Two great tears over-brimmed her pure pale underlids and fell upon her shabby black gown. She said, trembling a little:
"You are very good to have so much solicitude for me. I thank you very humbly. It is true that I have sustained a terrible wound, and that it rankles—is that the right word? My nature is not gentle—not amiable!—I long to strike back when I am wounded.... When those I love are hurt..." She stopped and controlled herself with a visible effort, then resumed: "I have it in me to be pitiless! See you well, there is something of my mother in me!"
"Of your mother?..."
He echoed the words in dismay that was almost ludicrous.... He had never asked whether Juliette possessed a mother or not. Now he looked to the house, expecting one of the shuttered French windows to open, anticipating the appearance of a middle-aged lady arrayed in mourning crape and weepers, and Juliette followed and understood his look. She said, with sorrowful meaning:
"Where friends of my father live. Monsieur, you do not find my mother. She is very beautiful, but not good, not noble, as he!... She left him many years ago, when I was an infant. See! I could not have been higher than that!" She measured with her hand above the turf the height of the baby of five years, with hair that had been silky and yellow as newly hatched chickens' down. She said, her clear, transparent face darkening with the shadow that swept across her memory: "Before I encountered you at Gravelotte I had passed through a terrible experience. This lady—of whom I dread to speak!—was thrown across my path. She did not reveal to me that she was my mother, when I quitted Brussels in her company.... She represented herself as the wife of an officer who had been wounded. She told me that my father was a prisoner in the hands of the Prussians. She took me to Rethel, that I might lay my case before the Prince Imperial, and beg him to obtain my father's release."
P. C. Breagh looked at her doubtfully, fearing—what he most feared for her. She said, drawing a folded envelope from the bosom of her black school dress:
"Never shall I forget how graciously Monseigneur received me. Here is a little keepsake he gave me with his own hand.... You shall hold it in yours, because you are my friend, and Monseigneur would permit it.... No one else, because no one deserves it save you!"
And she exhibited with dainty pride the splinter of rusty scrap iron. The envelope bore a small Imperial crown in gold, with the initial "E" beneath.... It was directed in violet ink and in a handwriting pointed and elegantly feminine, to S. A. the Prince Imperial, with the Great Headquarters of the Imperial Army, at the Prefecture of Metz.
"He is so brave!... He wanted to join M. de Bazaine and fight the Prussians. He stamped ... he wept ... he suffered such chagrin when the telegram came from the Emperor.... No! I must not tell you of the telegram.... My Prince said: 'Mademoiselle shall hear it because she is discreet!'..."