a little kindly. But my Madelon really did fall quite sick and
ill; and when I tried to talk her out of the silly nonsense, she called
out your name a thousand times. Last evening I told her I gave in and
agreed to everything, and would go to-day to fetch you; so this morning
she is blooming again like any rose, and waiting for you, quite beyond
herself with love-longing.' May the eternal power of Heaven forgive me,
but--I don't know how it came about--I suddenly found myself in
Cardillac's house, where Madelon, with loud cries of 'Olivier!--my
Olivier!--my beloved! my husband!' clasped both her arms about me, and
pressed me to her heart; whilst I, in the plenitude of the supremest
bliss, swore by the Virgin and all the Saints never, never to leave
her."

Overcome by the remembrance of this decisive moment, Olivier was
obliged to pause. Mademoiselle Scuderi, horrified at the crime of a man
whom she had looked on as the incarnation of probity and goodness,
cried--

"Dreadful!--Rene Cardillac a member of that band of murderers who have
so long made Paris into a robber's den!" "A member of the band, do you
say, Mademoiselle?" said Olivier. "There never was any band; it was
Rene Cardillac alone, who sought and found his victims with such an
amount of diabolical ingenuity and activity. It was in the fact of his
being alone that his impunity lay--the practical impossibility of
coming upon the murderer's track. But let me go on. What is coming will
clear up the mystery, and reveal the secrets of the most wicked, and at
the same time most wretched of all mankind. You at once see the
position in which I now stood towards my master. The step was taken,
and I could not go back. At times it seemed to me that I had rendered
myself Cardillac's accomplice in murder, and it was only in Madelon's
love that I forgot for a time the inward pain which tortured me; only
in her society could I drive away all outward traces of the nameless
horror. When I was at work with the old man in the workshop, I could
not look him in the face--could scarcely speak a word--for the horror
which pervaded me in the presence of this terrible being, who fulfilled
all the duties of the tender father and the good citizen, while the
night shrouded his atrocities. Madelon, pure and pious as an angel,
hung upon him with the most idolatrous affection. It pierced my heart
when I thought that, if ever vengeance should overtake this masked
criminal, she would be the