, simply enough, his brethren;
and, secondly, because he knows those you have injured, and he punishes
you according to his ideas."

"But what right has he to exercise any such power over me?"

"Why, look you, Jacques! Between ourselves it is not worth while to
question the right of a man who might legally consign us to a scaffold.
But what would be the result? Your two only relations are both dead;
consequently government would profit by your wealth, to the injury of
those you have wronged. On the other hand, by making your fortune the
price of your life, Morel (the father of the unhappy girl you
dishonoured), with his numerous family, may be placed beyond the reach
of want; Madame de Fermont, the sister of the pretended self-murderer,
Renneville, will get back her one hundred thousand crowns; Germain,
falsely accused by you of robbery, will be reinstated in life, and
placed at the head of the 'Bank for distressed Workmen,' which you are
compelled to found and endow as an expiation for your many offences
against society. And, candidly looking at the thing in the same point of
view as he who now holds us in his clutches, it must be owned that,
though mankind would have gained nothing by your death, they will be
considerably advantaged by your life."

"And this it is excites my rage, that forms my greatest torture!"

"The prince knows that as well as you do. And what is he going to do
with us, after all? I know not. He promised us our lives, if we would
blindly comply with all his orders; but if he should not consider our
past offences sufficiently expiated, he will find means to make death
itself preferable a thousand times to the existence he grants us. You
don't know him. When he believes himself called upon to be stern, no
executioner can be more inexorable and unpitying to the criminal his
hand must deprive of life. He must have had some fiend at his elbow, to
discover what I went into Normandy for. However, he has more than one
demon at his command; for that Cecily, whom may the descending lightning
strike to the earth--"

"Again I say, silence! Name her not! Utter not the word Cecily!"

"I tell you I wish that every curse may light upon her! And have I not
good reason for hating one who has placed us in our present situation?
But for her, our heads would be safe on our shoulders, and likely to
remain so. To what has your besotted passion for that creature brought
us!"

Instead of breaking out into a fresh