"He is mad," said he, with horrible composure and complacency; "quite mad. Take him to his bed."
The waiters lifted up the insensible body, and carried it away. The stranger leaned his elbows upon a table, and, covering his face with his hands, remained for some minutes absorbed in thought. A slight noise made him look up. The priest stood opposite to him, and uttered his name.
"Dominique Lafon," he said, calmly but severely, "what is this thing you have done? But you need not tell me. I know much, and can conjecture the rest. Wretched man, know you not the word of God, to whom is all vengeance, and who repayeth in his own good time?"
Dominique seemed surprised at hearing his name pronounced by a stranger. He looked hard at the priest. And presently a name connected with days of happiness and innocence broke from the lips of the vindictive and pitiless man.
It was indeed his former fellow-student, whom circumstances and disposition had induced to abandon the study of the law and enter the church. They had not met since Dominique departed from Paris to receive the last sigh of his dying mother.
Who shall trace the secret springs whence flow the fountains of the heart? For seven years Dominique Lafon had not wept. His captivity and many sufferings, his father's death, all had been borne with a bitter heart, but with dry eyes. But now, at sight of the comrade of his youth, some hidden chord, long entombed, suddenly vibrated. A sob burst from his bosom, and was succeeded by a gush of tears.
Henry la Chapelle looked sadly and kindly at his boyhood's friend.
"He who trusteth in himself," he said in low and gentle tones, "let him take heed, lest his feet fall into the snares they despise. Alas! Dominique, that you so soon forgot our last conversation! Alas! that you have laid this sin to your soul! But those tears give me hope: they are the early dew of penitence. Come, my friend, and seek comfort where alone it may be found. Verily there is joy in heaven over one repentant sinner, more than over many just men."
And the good priest drew his friend's arm through his, and led him from the room.
Dominique's exclamation was prophetic. When Anthony Noell rose from the bed of sickness to which grief consigned him, his intellects were gone. He never recovered them, but passed the rest of his life in helpless idiocy at his country-house, near Marseilles. There he was sedulously and tenderly watched by the unhappy Florinda, who, after a few miserable months passed with her reprobate seducer, was released from farther ill-usage by the death of Vicenzo, stabbed in Italy in a gambling brawl.