st needs be great indeed, who have so well performed a mother's
task!

Vautrin
And better than you mothers do! Often you love your babes amiss--Ah,
you will spoil him for me even now!--He was of reckless courage; he
wished to be a soldier, and the Emperor would have accepted him. I
showed him the world and mankind under their true light--Yet now he is
about to renounce me--

The Duchess
My son ungrateful?

Vautrin
NO, 'tis mine I speak of.

The Duchess
Oh! give him back to me this very instant!

Vautrin
I and those two men upstairs--are we not all liable to prosecution?
And ought not the duke to give us assurance of silence and release?

The Duchess
Those two men then are your agents? And you came--

Vautrin
But for me, of the two, natural and lawful son, there would not, in a
few hours, have survived but one child. And they might perchance both
have fallen--each by the other's hand.

The Duchess
Ah! you are a providence of horror!

Vautrin
What would you have had me do?

SCENE FOURTEENTH.
The same persons, the Duke, Lafouraille, Buteux, Saint-Charles, and
all the domestics.

The Duke (pointing to Vautrin)
Seize him! (Pointing to Saint-Charles) And obey no one but this
gentleman.

The Duchess
But you owe to him the life of your Albert! It was he who gave the
alarm.

The Duke
He!

Buteux (to Vautrin)
Ah! you have betrayed us! Why did you bring us here?

Saint-Charles (to the duke)
Does your grace hear them?

Lafouraille (to Buteux)
Cannot you keep silence? Have we any right to judge him?

Buteux
And yet he condemns us!

Vautrin (to the duke)
I would inform your grace that these two men belong to me, and I claim
possession of them.

Saint-Charles
Why, these are the domestics of Monsieur de Frescas!

Vautrin (to Saint-Charles)
Steward of the Langeacs, hold your tongue! (He points to Lafouraille)
This is Philip Boulard. (Lafouraille bows.) Will your grace kindly
send every one out of the room?

The Duke
What! Do you dare give your orders in my house?

The Duchess
Ah! sir, he is master here.

The Duke
What! This wretch?

Vautrin
If his grace the duke wishes to have an audience present we will
proceed to talk of the son of Dona Mendes.

The Duke
Silence!

Vautrin
Whom you are passing off as the son of--

The Duke
Once more I say, silence!

Vautrin
Your grace perceives, evidently, that there are too many people within
hearing.

The Duke
All of you begone!

V