nizing their
former prosecutor and preventing his entrance through the door of the
salon. "Have you come to kill Madame?"

"Manon, let the gentleman come in," said Monsieur Alain.

Manon sat down on a chair as if both her legs had given way at once.

"Monsieur," said the baron in an agitated voice, recognizing Monsieur
Joseph and Godefroid, and bowing to Monsieur Nicolas, "mercy gives
rights to those it benefits."

"You owe us nothing, monsieur;" said the good old Alain; "you owe
everything to God."

"You are saints, and you have the calmness of saints;" said the former
magistrate; "you will therefore listen to me. I know that the vast
benefits I have received during the last eighteen months have come from
the hand of a person whom I grievously injured in doing my duty. It was
fifteen years before I was convinced of her innocence; and that case is
the only one, gentlemen, for which I feel any remorse as to the exercise
of my functions. Listen to me! I have but a short time to live, but I
shall lose even that poor remnant of a life, still so important to my
children whom Madame de la Chanterie has saved, unless she will also
grant me her pardon. Yes, I will stay there on my knees on the pavement
of Notre-Dame until she says to me that word. I, who cannot weep, whom
the tortures of my child have dried like stubble, I shall find tears
within me to move her--"

The door of Madame de la Chanterie's room opened; the Abbe de Veze
glided in like a shadow and said to Monsieur Joseph:--

"That voice is torturing Madame."

"Ah! she is there!" exclaimed the baron.

He fell on his knees and burst into tears, crying out in a heart-rending
voice: "In the name of Jesus dying on the cross, forgive, forgive me,
for my daughter has suffered a thousand deaths!"

The old man fell forward on the floor so prone that the agitated
spectators thought him dead. At that instant Madame de la Chanterie
appeared like a spectre at the door of her room, against the frame of
which she supported herself.

"In the name of Louis XVI. and Marie-Antoinette whom I see on their
scaffold, in the name of Madame Elisabeth, in the name of my daughter
and of yours, and for Jesus' sake, I forgive you."

Hearing those words the old man raised his head. "It is the vengeance of
angels!" he said.

Monsieur Joseph and Monsieur Nicolas raised him and led him to the
courtyard; Godefroid went to fetch a carriage, and when they put the old
man into it Monsie