f her inflexible will.

Her reflections were not of a nature to appease her rancor.

Whatever Chupin and all Sairmeuse might say to the contrary, Blanche
regarded this story of Marie-Anne's travels as a ridiculous fable.
In her opinion, Marie-Anne had simply emerged from the retreat where
Martial had deemed it prudent to conceal her.

But why this sudden reappearance? The vindictive woman was ready to
swear that it was out of mere bravado, and intended only as an insult to
her.

"And I will have my revenge," she thought. "I would tear my heart out if
it were capable of cowardly weakness under such provocation!"

The voice of conscience was unheard in this tumult of passion. Her
sufferings, and Jean Lacheneur's attempt upon her father's life seemed
to justify the most extreme measures.

She had plenty of time now to brood over her wrongs, and to concoct
schemes of vengeance. Her father no longer required her care. He had
passed from the frenzied ravings of insanity and delirium to the stupor
of idiocy.

The physician declared his patient cured.

Cured! The body was cured, perhaps, but reason had succumbed. All traces
of intelligence had disappeared from this once mobile face, so ready to
assume any expression which the most consummate hypocrisy required.

There was no longer a sparkle in the eye which had formerly gleamed with
cunning, and the lower lip hung with a terrible expression of stupidity.

And there was no hope of any improvement.

A single passion, the table, took the place of all the passions which
had formerly swayed the life of this ambitious man.

The marquis, who had always been temperate in his habits, now ate and
drank with the most disgusting voracity, and he was becoming immensely
corpulent. A soulless body, he wandered about the chateau and its
surroundings without projects, without aim. Self-consciousness, all
thought of dignity, knowledge of good and evil, memory--he had lost
all these. Even the instinct of self-preservation, the last which dies
within us, had departed, and he had to be watched like a child.

Often, as the marquis roamed about the large gardens, his daughter
regarded him from her window with a strange terror in her heart.

But this warning of Providence only increased her desire for revenge.

"Who would not prefer death to such a misfortune?" she murmured. "Ah!
Jean Lacheneur's revenge is far more terrible than it would have been
had his bullet pierced my father's