nothing will keep me. I must
absolutely see her."

"But, madam"--

"Go! Don't you see that it is a question of life and death?"

There was such authority in her voice, that the watchman no longer
hesitated. He went in once more, and reappeared a moment after.

"Go in," he said to the young girl.

She went in, and found herself in a little anteroom which preceded the
office of the commonwealth attorney. A large lamp illuminated the room.
The door leading to the room in which the count was lying was closed.

In the centre of the room stood the Countess Claudieuse. All these
successive blows had not broken her indomitable energy. She looked pale,
but calm.

"Since you insist upon it, madam," she began, "I come to tell you
myself that I cannot listen to you. Are you not aware that I am standing
between two open graves,--that of my poor girl, who is dying at my
house, and that of my husband, who is breathing his last in there?"

She made a motion as if she were about to retire; but Dionysia stopped
her by a threatening look, and said with a trembling voice,--

"If you go back into that room where your husband is, I shall go back
with you, and I shall speak before him. I shall ask you right before
him, how you dare order a priest away from his bedside at the moment
of death, and whether, after having robbed him of all his happiness in
life, you mean to make him unhappy in all eternity."

Instinctively the countess drew back.

"I do not understand you," she said.

"Yes, you do understand me, madam. Why will you deny it? Do you not see
that I know every thing, and that I have guessed what you have not told
me? Jacques was your lover; and your husband has had his revenge."

"Ah!" cried the countess, "that is too much; that is too much!"

"And you have permitted it," Dionysia went on with breathless haste;
"and you did not come, and cry out in open court that your husband was
a false witness! What a woman you must be! You do not mind it, that your
love carries a poor unfortunate man to the galleys. You mean to live on
with this thought in your heart, that the man whom you love is innocent,
and nevertheless, disgraced forever, and cut off from human society. A
priest might induce the count to retract his statement, you know very
well; and hence you refuse to let the priest from Brechy come to his
bedside. And what is the end and aim of all your crimes? To save your
false reputation as an honest woman. Ah! that is