murder, and revenge; and he chooses to declare that it is I who, by
rejecting his love, drove him to these foul extremities. May God forgive
him that abominable lie! The evil we do, Monsieur, is within us; it does
not come from circumstance. I, in the meanwhile, was a happy wife. My
husband, M. de Lannoy, who was an officer in the army, idolised me. We
had one child, a boy--"

She paused, with another catch in her throat. Then she resumed, with
calmness that, in view of the tale she told, sounded strangely weird:

"In June last year my child was stolen from me--stolen by Marat in
hideous revenge for the supposed wrong which I had done him. The details
of that execrable outrage are of no importance. I was decoyed from home
one day through the agency of a forged message purporting to come from a
very dear friend whom I knew to be in grave trouble at the time. Oh! the
whole thing was thoroughly well thought out, I can assure you!" she
continued, with a harsh laugh which ended in a heartrending sob. "The
forged message, the suborned servant, the threats of terrible reprisals
if anyone in the village gave me the slightest warning or clue. When the
whole miserable business was accomplished, I was just like a trapped
animal inside a cage, held captive by immovable bars of obstinate
silence and cruel indifference. No one would help me. No one ostensibly
knew anything; no one had seen anything, heard anything. The child was
gone! My servants, the people in the village--some of whom I could have
sworn were true and sympathetic--only shrugged their shoulders. 'Que
voulez-vous, Madame? Children of bourgeois as well as of aristos were
often taken up by the State to be brought up as true patriots and no
longer pampered like so many lap-dogs.'

"Three days later I received a letter from that inhuman monster, Jean