the overmastering
might of her sorrow turned her words into sobbing.

She had been awakened at midnight by a soft knocking at her door, and
had recognised the voice of Olivier, imploring her to get up at once,
as her father lay dying. She sprung up, terrified, and opened the door.
Olivier, pale and distorted, bathed in perspiration, led the way, with
tottering steps, to the workshop; she followed. There her father was
lying with his eyes set, and the deathrattle in his throat. She threw
herself upon him, weeping wildly, and then observed that his shirt was
covered with blood. Olivier gently lifted her away, and then busied
himself in bathing a wound (which was on her father's left breast) with
wound-balsam, and in washing it. As he was so doing her father's
consciousness came back; the rattle in his throat ceased, and, looking
first on her, and then on Olivier with most expressive glances, he took
her hand and placed it in Olivier's, pressing them both together. She
and Olivier then knelt down beside her father's bed; he raised himself
with a piercing cry, immediately fell back again, and with a deep
inspiration, departed this life. On this they both wept and lamented.
Olivier told her how her father had been murdered in his presence
during an expedition on which he had accompanied him that night by his
order, and how he had with the utmost difficulty carried him home, not
supposing him to be mortally wounded. As soon as it was day, the people
of the house--who had heard the sounds of the footsteps, and of the
weeping and lamenting during the night--came up, and found them still
kneeling, inconsolable by the father's body. Then an uproar commenced,
the Marechaussee broke in and Olivier was taken to prison as her
father's murderer. Madelon added the most touching account of Olivier's
virtues, goodness, piety, and sincerity, telling how he had honoured
his master as if he had been his own father, and how the latter
returned his affection in the fullest measure, choosing him for his
son-in-law in spite of his poverty, because his skill and fidelity were
equal to the nobleness of his heart. All this Madelon spoke right out
of the fullness of her heart, and added that if Olivier had thrust a
dagger into her father's heart before her very eyes, she would rather
have thought it a delusion of Satan's than have believed that Olivier
was capable of such a terrible and awful crime.

Mademoiselle Scuderi, most deeply touched by M