This death, which would never have happened, said Madame de Watteville, if her husband had stayed at Besancon, was ascribed by her to her daughter’s obstinacy.  She took an aversion for Rosalie, abandoning herself to grief and regrets that were evidently exaggerated.  She spoke of the Baron as “her dear lamb!”

The last of the Wattevilles was buried on an island in the lake at les Rouxey, where the Baroness had a little Gothic monument erected of white marble, like that called the tomb of Heloise at Pere-Lachaise.

A month after this catastrophe the mother and daughter had settled in the Hotel de Rupt, where they lived in savage silence.  Rosalie was suffering from real sorrow, which had no visible outlet; she accused herself of her father’s death, and she feared another disaster, much greater in her eyes, and very certainly her own work; neither Girardet the attorney nor the Abbe de Grancey could obtain any information concerning Albert.  This silence was appalling.  In a paroxysm of repentance she felt that she must confess to the Vicar-General the horrible machinations by which she had separated Francesca and Albert.  They had been simple, but formidable.  Mademoiselle de Watteville had intercepted Albert’s letters to the Duchess as well as that in which Francesca announced her husband’s illness, warning her lover that she could write to him no more during the time while she was devoted, as was her duty, to the care of the dying man.  Thus, while Albert was wholly occupied with election matters, the Duchess had written him only two letters; one in which she told him that the Duc d’Argaiolo was in danger, and one announcing her widowhood—­two noble and beautiful letters which Rosalie kept back.

After several nights’ labor she succeeded in imitating Albert’s writing very perfectly.  She had substituted three letters of her own writing for three of Albert’s, and the rough copies which she showed to the old priest made him shudder—­the genius of evil was revealed in them to such perfection.  Rosalie, writing in Albert’s name, had prepared the Duchess for a change in the Frenchman’s feelings, falsely representing him as faithless, and she had answered the news of the Duc d’Argaiolo’s death by announcing the marriage ere long of Albert and Mademoiselle de Watteville.  The two letters, intended to cross on the road, had, in fact, done so.  The infernal cleverness with which the letters were written so much astonished the Vicar-General that he read them a second time.  Francesca, stabbed to the heart by a girl who wanted to kill love in her rival, had answered the last in these four words:  “You are free.  Farewell.”

“Purely moral crimes, which give no hold to human justice, are the most atrocious and detestable,” said the Abbe severely.  “God often punishes them on earth; herein lies the reason of the terrible catastrophes which to us seem inexplicable.  Of all secret crimes buried in the mystery of private life, the most disgraceful is that of breaking the seal of a letter, or of reading it surreptitiously.  Every one, whoever it may be, and urged by whatever reason, who is guilty of such an act has stained his honor beyond retrieving.