firm voice:--

"You have less pity than the executioner."

Corentin quietly folded the hair in the letter, laid the letter aside on
the table, and put a box of counters on the top of it as if to prevent
its blowing away. His coolness in the midst of the general emotion was
horrible.

Peyrade unfolded the other letters.

"Oh, as for those," said Laurence, "they are very much alike. You hear
the will; you can now hear of its fulfilment. In future I shall have no
secrets from any one."

1794, Andernach. Before the battle.

My dear Laurence,--I love you for life, and I wish you to know it.
But you ought also to know, in case I die, that my brother,
Paul-Marie, loves you as much as I love you. My only consolation in
dying would be the thought that you might some day make my brother
your husband without being forced to see me die of jealousy--which
must surely happen if, both of us being alive, you preferred him
to me. After all, that preference seems natural, for he is,
perhaps, more worthy of your love than I--

Marie-Paul.

"Here is the other letter," she said, with the color in her cheeks.

Andernach. Before the battle.

My kind Laurence,--My heart is sad; but Marie-Paul has a gayer
nature, and will please you more than I am able to do. Some day
you will have to choose between us--well, though I love you
passionately--

"You are corresponding with _emigres_," said Peyrade, interrupting
Laurence, and holding the letters between himself and the light to
see if they contained between the lines any treasonable writing with
invisible ink.

"Yes," replied Laurence, folding the precious letters, the paper of
which was already yellow with time. "But by virtue of what right do you
presume to violate my dwelling and my personal liberty?"

"Ah, that's the point!" cried Peyrade. "By what right, indeed!--it
is time to let you know it, beautiful aristocrat," he added, taking a
warrant from his pocket, which came from the minister of justice and
was countersigned by the minister of the interior. "See, the authorities
have their eye upon you."

"We might also ask you," said Corentin, in her ear, "by what right you
harbor in this house the assassins of the First Consul. You have applied
your whip to my hands in a manner that authorizes me to take my revenge
upon your cousins, whom I came here to save."

At the mere movement of her lips and the glance which Laurence cast upon
Coren