a low and as it were, confidential tone, "and if not, Louise is to be
guillotined."

And again he imitated the turning of his lathe.

Louise gave a piercing shriek.

"He is mad!" she exclaimed, "he is mad! and it is I--it is I who am the
cause! Oh! Yet it is not my fault,--I did not desire to do ill,--it was
that monster."

"Courage, courage, my poor girl," said Rodolph, "let us hope that this
attack is but momentary. Your father has suffered so much; so many
troubles, all at once, were more than he could bear. His reason wanders
for a moment; it will soon be restored."

"But my mother, my grandmother, my sisters, my brothers, what will
become of them all?" exclaimed Louise, "Now they are deprived of my
father and myself, they must die of hunger, misery and despair!"

"Am I not here?--make your mind, easy; they shall want for nothing.
Courage, I say to you. Your disclosure will bring about the punishment
of a great criminal. You have convinced me of your innocence, and I have
no doubt but that it will be discovered and proclaimed."

"Ah, sir, you see,--dishonour, madness, death,--see the miseries which
that man causes, and yet no one can do any thing against him! Nothing!
The very thought completes all my wretchedness."

"So far from that, let the contrary thought help to support you."

"What mean you, sir?"

"Take with you the assurance that your father, yourself, and your family
shall be avenged."

"Avenged!"

"Yes, that I swear to you," replied Rodolph, solemnly; "I swear to you
that his crimes shall be exposed, and this man shall bitterly expiate
the dishonour, madness, and death which he has caused. If the laws are
powerless to reach him, if his cunning and skill equal his misdeeds,
then his cunning must be met by cunning, his skill must be counteracted
by skill, his misdeeds faced by other misdeeds, but which shall be to
his but a just and avenging retribution, inflicted on a guilty wretch by
an inexorable hand, when compared to a cowardly and base murder."

"Ah, sir, may Heaven hear you! It is no longer myself whom I seek to
avenge, but a poor, distracted father,--my child killed in its birth--"

Then, trying another effort to turn Morel from his insanity, Louise
again exclaimed:

"Adieu, father! They are going to lead me to prison, and I shall never
see you again. It is your poor Louise who bids you adieu. My father! my
father! my father!"

To this distressing appeal there was no response. In