This artless letter, puerile perhaps in its detail, but which pictured a happiness so profound, which spoke of hopes so radiant, was enclosed in another letter, bearing this address, “To the Commander Pierre des Anbiez,” and containing the following words, written in haste, and with a weak and trembling hand:
“He believes me--read--read. I feel that I am about to die--read, that his letter may be our torment here below, while we wait for that which God reserves for us.
“Now, I am ashamed of you--of myself; we have been base--base like the traitors we are.
“This infamous lie--never will I dare assert it before him--never will I allow him to believe that this child--Ah, I am in an abyss of despair!
“Never has my sin appeared more terrible to me than since this execrable lie was made to impose upon his noble confidence in order to shield ourselves.
“May Heaven protect this unfortunate child.
“Under what horrible auspices will it be born, if it is born, for I feel now it must die before seeing the light--I can never survive the agony I suffer. Yet my husband is coming,--never will I lie to him. What shall I do?
“No, do not depart--my poor head wanders--at least--surely--you will not abandon me--no, no, do not depart--come--come--
Pog, the Count de Montreuil, as the sequel will show, had never been able, in discovering his wife’s guilt, to learn the name of the unhappy woman’s seducer. Nor did he know that Erebus was the child of this adulterous connection.
For a moment he was overwhelmed with conflicting emotions. Although such a bitterness of resentment might seem puerile, after the lapse of so many years, his rage reached its height when he saw this letter, written by himself in the very intoxication of happiness, and full of those confidences of the soul which a man dares pour out only in the heart of a beloved wife, enclosed in one addressed to her seducer, when he realised that it had been read, perhaps laughed at, by his enemy, the Commander des Anbiez.
In his fury he could only think of the painful ridiculousness of his attitude in the eyes of that man, as he spoke with so much freedom, so much love, and so much idolatry, of a child which was not his, and of this wife who had so basely deceived him.