amount to fifteen thousand
francs. Take note of this, so that you may return that sum either
yourself, or through your descendants, whenever the prosperity of
your family will admit of it,--for that money is the money of the
poor. When you or your family are able to make this restitution,
pay the sum you owe into the hands of Messrs. Mongenod and
Company, bankers.

May God forgive you.

Five crosses formed the mysterious signature of this letter, which
Godefroid returned to the baron.

"The five crosses are there," he said as if to himself.

"Ah! monsieur," said the old man; "you do know all; you were sent to me
by that mysterious lady--tell me her name!"

"Her name!" exclaimed Godefroid; "her name! Unhappy man! you must not
ask it; never seek to find it out. Ah! madame," he cried, taking Madame
de Mergi's hand; "tell your father, if he values his peace of mind, to
remain in his ignorance and make no effort to discover the truth."

"No, tell it!" said Vanda.

"Well, then, she who saved your daughter," said Godefroid, looking at
the old man, "who returns her to you young and beautiful and fresh and
happy, who rescued her from her coffin, she who saved your grandson from
disgrace, and has given you an old age of peace and honor--" He stopped
short--"is a woman whom you sent innocent to prison for twenty years;
to whom, as a magistrate, you did the foulest wrong; whose sanctity you
insulted; whose beautiful daughter you tore from her arms and condemned
to the cruellest of all deaths, for she died on the guillotine."

Godefroid, seeing that Vanda had fallen back half fainting on her chair,
rushed into the corridor and from there into the street, running at full
speed.

"If you want your pardon," said Baron Bourlac to his grandson, "follow
that man and find out where he lives."

Auguste was off like an arrow.

The next morning at eight o'clock, Baron Bourlac knocked at the
old yellow door in the rue Chanoinesse, and asked for Madame de la
Chanterie. The portress showed him the portico. Happily it was the
breakfast hour. Godefroid saw the baron, through one of the casements on
the stairs, crossing the court-yard; he had just time to get down into
the salon where the friends were all assembled and to cry out:--

"Baron Bourlac is here!"

Madame de la Chanterie, hearing the name, rose; supported by the Abbe de
Veze she went to her room.

"You shall not come in, tool of Satan!" cried Manon, recog