He suddenly interrupted himself.  A ray of intelligence had just illumined the abyss of despair into which he had fallen.

“No,” said he, “a young girl is not thus abandoned, when she has a dowry of a million, unless for some good reason.  Love passes away; avarice remains.  The infamous wretch was not free—­he was married.  He could only be the Count de Tremorel.  It is he who has killed my child.”

The profound silence which succeeded proved to him that his conjecture was shared by those around him.

“I was blind, blind!” cried he.  “For I received him at my house, and called him my friend.  Oh, have I not a right to a terrible vengeance?”

But the crime at Valfeuillu occurred to him; and it was with a tone of deep disappointment that he resumed: 

“And not to be able to revenge myself!  I could riot, then, kill him with my own hands, see him suffer for hours, hear him beg for mercy!  He is dead.  He has fallen under the blows of assassins, less vile than himself.”

The doctor and M. Plantat strove to comfort the unhappy man; but he went on, excited more and more by the sound of his own voice.

“Oh, Laurence, my beloved, why did you not confide in me?  You feared my anger, as if a father would ever cease to love his child.  Lost, degraded, fallen to the ranks of the vilest, I would still love thee.  Were you not my own?  Alas! you knew not a father’s heart.  A father does not pardon; he forgets.  You might still have been happy, my lost love.”

He wept; a thousand memories of the time when Laurence was a child and played about his knees recurred to his mind; it seemed as though it were but yesterday.

“Oh, my daughter, was it that you feared the world—­the wicked, hypocritical world?  But we should have gone away.  I should have left Orcival, resigned my office.  We should have settled down far away, in the remotest corner of France, in Germany, in Italy.  With money all is possible.  All?  No!  I have millions, and yet my daughter has killed herself.”

He concealed his face in his hands; his sobs choked him.

“And not to know what has become of her!” he continued.  “Is it not frightful?  What death did she choose?  You remember, Doctor, and you, Plantat, her beautiful curls about her pure forehead, her great, trembling eyes, her long curved lashes?  Her smile—­do you know, it was the sun’s ray of my life.  I so loved her voice, and her mouth so fresh, which gave me such warm, loving kisses.  Dead!  Lost!  And not to know what has become of her sweet form—­perhaps abandoned in the mire of some river.  Do you recall the countess’s body this morning?  It will kill me!  Oh, my child—­that I might see her one hour—­one minute—­that I might give her cold lips one last kiss!”

M. Lecoq strove in vain to prevent a warm tear which ran from his eyes, from falling.  M. Lecoq was a stoic on principle, and by profession.  But the desolate words of the poor father overcame him.  Forgetting that his emotion would be seen, he came out from the shadow where he had stood, and spoke to M. Courtois: