I hold most sacred, that whoever they may be they
shall die. Now, after the oath I have just taken, and which I will keep,
madame, dare you ask for mercy for that wretch!"

"But, sir, are you sure he is as guilty as they say?"

"Listen; this is his description: 'Benedetto, condemned, at the age of
sixteen, for five years to the galleys for forgery.' He promised well,
as you see--first a runaway, then an assassin."

"And who is this wretch?"

"Who can tell?--a vagabond, a Corsican."

"Has no one owned him?"

"No one; his parents are unknown."

"But who was the man who brought him from Lucca?"

"Another rascal like himself, perhaps his accomplice." The baroness
clasped her hands. "Villefort," she exclaimed in her softest and most
captivating manner.

"For heaven's sake, madame," said Villefort, with a firmness of
expression not altogether free from harshness--"for heaven's sake, do
not ask pardon of me for a guilty wretch! What am I?--the law. Has the
law any eyes to witness your grief? Has the law ears to be melted by
your sweet voice? Has the law a memory for all those soft recollections
you endeavor to recall? No, madame; the law has commanded, and when it
commands it strikes. You will tell me that I am a living being, and not
a code--a man, and not a volume. Look at me, madame--look around me.
Have mankind treated me as a brother? Have they loved me? Have they
spared me? Has any one shown the mercy towards me that you now ask at my
hands? No, madame, they struck me, always struck me!

"Woman, siren that you are, do you persist in fixing on me that
fascinating eye, which reminds me that I ought to blush? Well, be it so;
let me blush for the faults you know, and perhaps--perhaps for even
more than those! But having sinned myself,--it may be more deeply
than others,--I never rest till I have torn the disguises from my
fellow-creatures, and found out their weaknesses. I have always found
them; and more,--I repeat it with joy, with triumph,--I have always
found some proof of human perversity or error. Every criminal I condemn
seems to me living evidence that I am not a hideous exception to the
rest. Alas, alas, alas; all the world is wicked; let us therefore strike
at wickedness!"

Villefort pronounced these last words with a feverish rage, which gave a
ferocious eloquence to his words.

"But"' said Madame Danglars, resolving to make a last effort, "this
young man, though a murderer, is an orphan, abandoned