ng person whom I reverence--_my
father!_"

She accented the words with a sort of tender, passionate piety, and
Jacques Dantin saw that her eyes were filled with tears.

"Now, adieu!" she said.

Jacques still wished to speak of that last confidence of the dying man,
but she said again:

"Adieu!"

With her hand, gloved in black, she made the sign of the Cross, smiled
sadly as she looked at the tomb where the chrysanthemums lay, then
lowering her veil she went away, and Dantin, standing near the gray
tomb, saw her disappear at the end of an alley.

The martyr, expiating near the old crippled man, a fault of which she
was innocent, went back to him who was without suspicion; to him who
adored her and to whom she was, in their poor apartment in Blois, his
saint and his daughter.

She would watch, she would lose her youth, near that old soldier whose
robust constitution would endure many, many long years. She would pay
her dead mother's debt; she would pay it by devoting every hour of her
life to this man whose name she bore--an illustrious name, a name
belonging to the victories, to the struggles, to the history of
yesterday--she would be the hostage, the expiatory victim.

With all her life would she redeem the fault of that other!

"And who knows, my poor Rovere," said Jacques Dantin, "thy daughter,
proud of her sacrifice, is perhaps happier in doing this!"

In his turn he left the tomb, he went out of the cemetery, he wished to
walk to his lodging in the Rue Richelieu. He had only taken a few steps
along the Boulevard, where--it seemed but yesterday--he had followed
(talking with Bernardet) behind Rovere's funeral carriage, when he
nearly ran into a little man who was hurrying along the pavement. The
police officer saluted him, with a shaking of the head, which had in it
regret, a little confusion, some excuses.

"Ah! Monsieur Dantin, what a grudge you must have against me!"

"Not at all," said Dantin. "You thought that you were doing your duty,
and it did not displease me to have you try to so quickly avenge my poor
Rovere."

"Avenge him! Yes, he will be! I would not give four sous for Charles
Prades's head to-morrow, when he is tried. We shall see each other in
court. _Au revoir_, Monsieur Dantin, and all my excuses!"

"_Au revoir_, Monsieur Bernardet, and all my compliments!"

The two men separated. Bernardet was on his way home to breakfast. He
was late. Mme. Bernardet would be waiting, and a little