not have credited the delicate child with.
Directly you had gone she threw herself at my feet, clasped my knees,
and confessed amid endless tears that she could not live without you.
I thought she only fancied so, as so often happens with young and
love-sick girls; they think they shall die at once the first time a
milky-faced boy looks kindly upon them. But my Madelon did really
become ill and begin to pine away; and when I tried to talk her out of
her foolish silly notions, she only uttered your name scores of times.
What on earth could I do if I didn't want her to die away in despair?
Last evening I told her I would give my consent to her dearest wishes,
and would come and fetch you to-day. And during the night she has
blossomed up like a rose, and is now waiting for you with all the
longing impatience of love.'

"May God in heaven forgive me! I don't know myself how it came about,
but I suddenly found myself in Cardillac's house; and Madelon cried
aloud with joy, 'Olivier! my Olivier! my darling! my husband!' as she
rushed towards me and threw both her arms round my neck, pressing me
close to her bosom, till in a perfect delirium of passionate delight I
swore by the Virgin and all the saints that I would never, never leave
her."

Olivier was so deeply agitated by the recollection of this fateful
moment, that he was obliged to pause. De Scuderi, struck with horror at
this foul iniquity in a man whom she had always looked upon as a model
of virtue and honest integrity, cried, "Oh! it is horrible! So Rene
Cardillac belongs to the murderous band which has so long made our good
city a mere bandits' haunt?" "What do you say, Mademoiselle, to the
_band_?" said Olivier. "There has never been such a band. It was
Cardillac _alone_ who, active in wickedness, sought for his victims and
found them throughout the entire city. And it was because he acted
alone that he was enabled to carry on his operations with so much
security, and from the same cause arose the insuperable difficulty of
getting a clue to the murderer. But let me go on with my story; the
sequel will explain to you the secrets of the most atrocious but at the
same time of the most unfortunate of men.

"The situation in which I now found myself fixed at my master's may be
easily imagined. The step was taken; I could not go back. At times I
felt as though I were Cardillac's accomplice in crime; the only thing
that made me forget the inner anguish that tortured me