nglars,--"it is a long time since I had the pleasure of
speaking alone with you, and I regret that we have only now met to enter
upon a painful conversation."

"Nevertheless, sir, you see I have answered your first appeal, although
certainly the conversation must be much more painful for me than for
you." Villefort smiled bitterly.

"It is true, then," he said, rather uttering his thoughts aloud than
addressing his companion,--"it is true, then, that all our actions leave
their traces--some sad, others bright--on our paths; it is true
that every step in our lives is like the course of an insect on the
sands;--it leaves its track! Alas, to many the path is traced by tears."

"Sir," said Madame Danglars, "you can feel for my emotion, can you not?
Spare me, then, I beseech you. When I look at this room,--whence so many
guilty creatures have departed, trembling and ashamed, when I look
at that chair before which I now sit trembling and ashamed,--oh, it
requires all my reason to convince me that I am not a very guilty woman
and you a menacing judge." Villefort dropped his head and sighed. "And
I," he said, "I feel that my place is not in the judge's seat, but on
the prisoner's stool."

"You?" said Madame Danglars.

"Yes, I."

"I think, sir, you exaggerate your situation," said Madame Danglars,
whose beautiful eyes sparkled for a moment. "The paths of which you were
just speaking have been traced by all young men of ardent imaginations.
Besides the pleasure, there is always remorse from the indulgence of our
passions, and, after all, what have you men to fear from all this? the
world excuses, and notoriety ennobles you."

"Madame," replied Villefort, "you know that I am no hypocrite, or, at
least, that I never deceive without a reason. If my brow be severe, it
is because many misfortunes have clouded it; if my heart be petrified,
it is that it might sustain the blows it has received. I was not so in
my youth, I was not so on the night of the betrothal, when we were all
seated around a table in the Rue du Cours at Marseilles. But since
then everything has changed in and about me; I am accustomed to brave
difficulties, and, in the conflict to crush those who, by their own free
will, or by chance, voluntarily or involuntarily, interfere with me in
my career. It is generally the case that what we most ardently desire
is as ardently withheld from us by those who wish to obtain it, or from
whom we attempt to snatch it. Thus