h! My mother brought me up in the
Catholic Faith, and I know what is meant by God! It is to sinners like
us that His voice is most awful."

Valerie wiped away two tears that trickled down her cheeks. Crevel was
in dismay. Madame Marneffe stood up in her excitement.

"Be calm, my darling--you alarm me!"

Madame Marneffe fell on her knees.

"Dear Heaven! I am not bad all through!" she cried, clasping her hands.
"Vouchsafe to rescue Thy wandering lamb, strike her, crush her, snatch
her from foul and adulterous hands, and how gladly she will nestle on
Thy shoulder! How willingly she will return to the fold!"

She got up and looked at Crevel; her colorless eyes frightened him.

"Yes, Crevel, and, do you know? I, too, am frightened sometimes. The
justice of God is exerted in this nether world as well as in the next.
What mercy can I expect at God's hands? His vengeance overtakes the
guilty in many ways; it assumes every aspect of disaster. That is what
my mother told me on her death-bed, speaking of her own old age.--But
if I should lose you," she added, hugging Crevel with a sort of savage
frenzy--"oh! I should die!"

Madame Marneffe released Crevel, knelt down again at the armchair,
folded her hands--and in what a bewitching attitude!--and with
incredible fervor poured out the following prayer:--

"And thou, Saint Valerie, my patron saint, why dost thou so rarely visit
the pillow of her who was intrusted to thy care? Oh, come this evening,
as thou didst this morning, to inspire me with holy thoughts, and I will
quit the path of sin; like the Magdalen, I will give up deluding joys
and the false glitter of the world, even the man I love so well--"

"My precious duck!"

"No more of the 'precious duck,' monsieur!" said she, turning round
like a virtuous wife, her eyes full of tears, but dignified, cold, and
indifferent.

"Leave me," she went on, pushing him from her. "What is my duty? To
belong wholly to my husband.--He is a dying man, and what am I doing?
Deceiving him on the edge of the grave. He believes your child to be
his. I will tell him the truth, and begin by securing his pardon before
I ask for God's.--We must part. Good-bye, Monsieur Crevel," and she
stood up to offer him an icy cold hand. "Good-bye, my friend; we shall
meet no more till we meet in a better world.--You have to thank me for
some enjoyment, criminal indeed; now I want--oh yes, I shall have your
esteem."

Crevel was weeping bitter tears.