“If, when I tell you, dearest dear, that your agony is over, and

that I have come here to take you from it, and that we go to

England to be at peace and at rest, I cause you to think of your

useful life laid waste, and of our native France so wicked to you,

weep for it, weep for it! And if, when I shall tell you of my name,

and of my father who is living, and of my mother who is dead, you

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learn that I have to kneel to my honoured father, and implore his

pardon for having never for his sake striven all day and lain awake

and wept all night, because the love of my poor mother hid his

torture from me, weep for it, weep for it! Weep for her, then, and

for me! Good gentlemen, thank God! I feel his sacred tears upon

my face, and his sobs strike against my heart. O, see! Thank God

for us, thank God!”

He had sunk in her arms, and his face dropped on her breast: a

sight so touching, yet so terrible in the tremendous wrong and

suffering which had gone before it, that the two beholders covered

their faces.

When the quiet of the garret had been long undisturbed, and

his heaving breast and shaken form had long yielded to the calm

that must follow all stormsemblem to humanity, of the rest and

silence into which the storm called Life must hush at lastthey

came forward to raise the father and daughter