saw looking steadfastly at me? Ah, that look--that look! it
has haunted me ever since!" added Fleur-de-Marie, with a shudder.

"What look? Of whom do you speak?" cried Rodolph.

"Of the ogress of the _tapis-franc_!" answered Fleur-de-Marie.

"That monster! You saw her!--and where?"

"Did you not see her in the tavern where the Chourineur died? She was
amongst the women who surrounded us."

"Ah, now," said Rodolph, in a tone of despair, "I understand. Struck
with horror as you were at the murder of the Chourineur, you must have
imagined that you saw something prophetic in the sinister rencontre!"

"Yes, indeed, father, it was so. At the sight of the ogress I felt a
death-like shiver, and it seemed that under her scowl my heart, which,
until then, had been light, joyous, bounding, was instantly chilled to
ice. Yes, to meet that woman at the very instant when the Chourineur
died, saying, 'Heaven is just!' it seemed to me as a rebuke from
Providence for my proud forgetfulness of the past, which I was hereafter
to expiate by humility and repentance."

"But the past was forced on you, and you are not responsible for that in
the sight of God!"

"You were driven to it--overcome--my poor child!"

"Once precipitated into the abyss in spite of yourself, and unable to
quit it in spite of your remorse and despair, through the atrocious
recklessness of the society of which you were a victim, you saw yourself
for ever chained to this den, and it required that chance should throw
you in my way to rescue you from such thraldom."

"Then, too, my child, your father says you were the victim and not the
accomplice of this infamy," said Clemence.

"But yet, my mother, I have known this infamy!" replied Fleur-de-Marie,
in a tone of deepest grief. "Nothing can destroy these fearful
recollections,--they pursue me incessantly, not as formerly, in the
midst of the peaceful inhabitants of the farm, or the fallen women who
were my companions in St. Lazare, but they pursue me even in this
palace, filled with the elite of Germany; they pursue me even to my
father's arms, even to the steps of his throne!" And Fleur-de-Marie
burst into an agony of tears.

Rodolph and Clemence remained silent in presence of this fearful
expression of unextinguishable remorse; they wept, too, for they
perceived that their consolations were vain.

"Since then," continued Fleur-de-Marie, drying her tears, "I say to
myself every moment in the day, with bitte