d the
hundreds of thousands of francs which may be required. Your figures are
accurate, and it is possible that we may never have the money to buy
back the property. But, all the same, why not fight, why not try? And,
besides--I will admit it--suppose we are vanquished, well then, so much
the worse for the other. For I assure you that if this young man will
only listen to me, he will then become the agent of destruction, the
avenger and punisher, implanted in the factory to wreck it!"

With a gesture which summoned ruin athwart the walls, she finished
expressing her abominable hopes. Among her vague plans, reared upon
hate, was that of employing the wretched Alexandre as a destructive
weapon, whose ravages would bring her some relief. Should she lose
all other battles, that would assuredly be the final one. And she had
attained to this pitch of madness through the boundless despair in which
the loss of her only son had plunged her, withered, consumed by a love
which she could not content, then demented, perverted to the point of
crime.

Morange shuddered when, with her stubborn fierceness, she concluded:
"For twelve years past I have been waiting for a stroke of destiny, and
here it is! I would rather perish than not draw from it the last chance
of good fortune which it brings me!"

This meant that Denis's ruin was decided on, and would be effected if
destiny were willing. And the old accountant could picture the disaster:
innocent children struck down in the person of their father, a great and
most unjust catastrophe, which made his kindly heart rise in rebellion.
Would he allow that fresh crime to be committed without shouting aloud
all that he knew? Doubtless the memory of the other crime, the first
one, the monstrous buried crime about which they both kept silence,
returned at that horrible moment and shone out disturbingly in his eyes,
for she herself shuddered as if she could see it there, while with the
view of mastering him she gazed at him fixedly. For a moment, as
they peered into one another's eyes, they lived once more beside the
murderous trap, and shivered in the cold gust which rose from the abyss.
And this time again Morange, like a poor weak man overpowered by a
woman's will, was vanquished, and did not speak.

"So it is agreed, my friend," she softly resumed. "I rely on you to
take Alexandre, in the first place, as a clerk. You can see him here one
evening at five o'clock, after dusk, for I do not