ouse your conscience. If
you had no conscience left, I should not reproach you at all; but you
are so young! You must feel some life still in your heart; or so I like
to believe. While I think of you as depraved enough to do a wrong which
the law does not punish, I do not think you so degraded that you cannot
comprehend the full meaning of my words. I resume."

As he spoke the Duchess heard the smothered sound of a pair of bellows.
Those mysterious figures which she had just seen were blowing up the
fire, no doubt; the glow shone through the curtain. But Montriveau's
lurid face was turned upon her; she could not choose but wait with a
fast-beating heart and eyes fixed in a stare. However curious she felt,
the heat in Armand's words interested her even more than the crackling
of the mysterious flames.

"Madame," he went on after a pause, "if some poor wretch commits a
murder in Paris, it is the executioner's duty, you know, to lay hands on
him and stretch him on the plank, where murderers pay for their crimes
with their heads. Then the newspapers inform everyone, rich and poor, so
that the former are assured that they may sleep in peace, and the latter
are warned that they must be on the watch if they would live. Well, you
that are religious, and even a little of a bigot, may have masses said
for such a man's soul. You both belong to the same family, but yours is
the elder branch; and the elder branch may occupy high places in peace
and live happily and without cares. Want or anger may drive your brother
the convict to take a man's life; you have taken more, you have taken
the joy out of a man's life, you have killed all that was best in his
life--his dearest beliefs. The murderer simply lay in wait for his
victim, and killed him reluctantly, and in fear of the scaffold; but
_you_ ...! You heaped up every sin that weakness can commit against
strength that suspected no evil; you tamed a passive victim, the better
to gnaw his heart out; you lured him with caresses; you left nothing
undone that could set him dreaming, imagining, longing for the bliss of
love. You asked innumerable sacrifices of him, only to refuse to make
any in return. He should see the light indeed before you put out his
eyes! It is wonderful how you found the heart to do it! Such villainies
demand a display of resource quite above the comprehension of those
bourgeoises whom you laugh at and despise. They can give and forgive;
they know how to love and s