"Who are you, then?" she inquired with the greatest earnestness.
"The Instrument of Vengeance. Do you hear it?" he continued, as if listening. "The Voice of Vengeance in the distance, approaching, approaching, calling, calling? Nearer, year by year, month by month, day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment, until when it reaches my side I shall slay my enemy. When he fled to the farthest Indies, there he found me; now he is in Paris, and finds me here; wherever he goes he has found me. He knows his fate. He knows that I am the Instrument of Vengeance, that a day shall come that has not come, that this hand is the hand of heaven, and this sword the sword of the Almighty."
"You say he slew your father?"
"Yes, thrust him through on the steps of our house—the House of the Golden Dog."
"What was your father's name?"
"The Bourgeois Philibert, of Quebec."
"And who do you say killed him?"
"Répentigny."
"But not my Germain!" she exclaimed eagerly and positively.
"No, he is none of that spawn of evil."