so as
to win wealth and luxury for you more quickly. Fool that I was! No task
seemed too hard or too distasteful when I thought of you--and I was
always thinking of you. My mind was at peace--I had perfect faith in
you. We had a daughter; and if a fear or a doubt entered my mind, I told
myself that the sight of her cradle would drive all evil thoughts
from your heart. The adultery of a childless wife may be forgiven or
explained; but that of a mother, never! Fool! idiot! that I was! With
what joyous pride, on my return after an absence of eighteen months, I
showed you the treasures I had brought back with me! I had two hundred
thousand francs! I said to you as I embraced you: 'It is yours, my
well-beloved, the source of all my happiness!' But you did not care for
me--I wearied you! You loved another! And while you were deceiving
me with your caresses, you were, with fiendish skill, preparing a
conspiracy which, if it had succeeded, would have resulted in my death!
I should consider myself amply revenged if I could make you suffer for a
single day all the torments that I endured for long months. For this was
not all! You had not even the excuse, if excuse it be, of a powerful,
all-absorbing passion. Convinced of your treachery, I resolved to
ascertain everything, and I discovered that in my absence you had become
a mother. Why didn't I kill you? How did I have the courage to remain
silent and conceal what I knew? Ah! it was because, by watching you, I
hoped to discover the cursed bastard and your accomplice. It was because
I dreamed of a vengeance as terrible as the offence. I said to myself
that the day would come when, at any risk, you would try to see your
child again, to embrace her, and provide for her future. Fool! fool
that I was! You had already forgotten her! When you received news of my
intended return, she was sent to some foundling asylum, or left to die
upon some door-step. Have you ever thought of her? Have you ever asked
what has become of her? ever asked yourself if she had needed bread
while you have been living in almost regal luxury? ever asked yourself
into what depths of vice she may have fallen?"

"Always the same ridiculous accusation!" exclaimed the baroness.

"Yes, always!"

"You must know, however, that this story of a child is only a vile
slander. I told you so when you spoke of it to me a dozen years
afterward. I have repeated it a thousand times since."

The baron uttered a sigh that was