demanding: "Where is he, where is my boy, my
sweet Narcisse?" and threw herself upon the corpse
of her son. The advocate looked on with a bitter
smile, and when he beheld her covering with kisses
the cold, coarse features, exclaimed: "How these
things love each other! -- but when he was alive she
would give him the food out of her mouth, draw for
him the blood from her veins, sacrifice the immortal
soul in her body with lies and patent perjury and
crookedest excuses, if so was that she might screen
him and his faults, deceiving me. -- Beshrew thee,
woman! -- but wherefore should I curse thee? thou
art what thou wert made to be, even as I am that
which I was made to be, a desolation and a miserable
man:" and when he ceased Babet started from her
knees, and, looking on him with new born fierceness,
cried: "Monster, not master; man killer, son killer, --
oh, you have killed my own, my dear Narcisse!
murdered my son, my boy, my child, my only joy:"
and she again cast herself upon the body, and, with
her face nestling in the dead bosom, sobbed and wept
aloud.

The advocate seemed softened, and, looking at
Claude, demanded: "Who is there that shall not
fulfil his fate? for this I was born, and for it I shall
die." The sheriff again essayed to remove him, but he
sank at his touch, as the dust of an ancient corpse falls
before the breath of the outer atmosphere, and with
mortality moulding his visage: "Stay," he said, "let
me die here; death has arrested me, he needs no
warrant." A spasm passed over his face, his frame
slightly quivered; and looking beseechingly at Claude,
the latter bent tenderly over him, and he thus began:

[[123]]

p122 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p123w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p124

v?