"Madame," said he with a flourish of eloquence, "to your own free will alone would I owe—"
"Madame, he is—" cried Brigitte, thinking that her mistress was alone. At the sight of the public prosecutor, the old servant's joy-flushed countenance became haggard and impassive.
"Who is it, Brigitte?" the prosecutor asked kindly, as if he too were in the secret of the household.
"A conscript that the mayor has sent here for a night's lodging," the woman replied, holding out the billet.
"So it is," said the prosecutor, when he had read the slip of paper. "A battalion is coming here to-night."
And he went.
The Countess's need to believe in the faith of her sometime attorney was so great, that she dared not entertain any suspicion of him. She fled upstairs; she felt scarcely strength enough to stand; she opened the door, and sprang, half dead with fear, into her son's arms.
"Oh! my child! my child!" she sobbed, covering him with almost frenzied kisses.
"Madame!..." said a stranger's voice.
"Oh! it is not he!" she cried, shrinking away in terror, and she stood face to face with the conscript, gazing at him with haggard eyes.