“Write no more, unless to do honor to truth,” said the Vicar-General.  “Place the real and the false letters in my hands, confess everything in detail as though I were the keeper of your conscience, asking me how you may expiate your sins, and doing as I bid you.  I shall see —­for, above all things, restore this unfortunate man to his innocence in the eyes of the woman he had made his divinity on earth.  Though he has lost his happiness, Albert must still hope for justification.”

Rosalie promised to obey the Abbe, hoping that the steps he might take would perhaps end in bringing Albert back to her.

Not long after Mademoiselle de Watteville’s confession a clerk came to Besancon from Monsieur Leopold Hannequin, armed with a power of attorney from Albert; he called first on Monsieur Girardet, begging his assistance in selling the house belonging to Monsieur Savaron.  The attorney undertook to do this out of friendship for Albert.  The clerk from Paris sold the furniture, and with the proceeds could repay some money owed by Savaron to Girardet, who on the occasion of his inexplicable departure had lent him five thousand francs while undertaking to collect his assets.  When Girardet asked what had become of the handsome and noble pleader, to whom he had been so much attached, the clerk replied that no one knew but his master, and that the notary had seemed greatly distressed by the contents of the last letter he had received from Monsieur Albert de Savarus.

On hearing this, the Vicar-General wrote to Leopold.  This was the worthy notary’s reply:—­

“To Monsieur l’Abbe de Grancey,
Vicar-General of the Diocese of Besancon.

“PARIS.

“Alas, monsieur, it is in nobody’s power to restore Albert to the life of the world; he has renounced it.  He is a novice in the monastery of the Grand Chartreuse near Grenoble.  You know, better than I who have but just learned it, that on the threshold of that cloister everything dies.  Albert, foreseeing that I should go to him, placed the General of the Order between my utmost efforts and himself.  I know his noble soul well enough to be sure that he is the victim of some odious plot unknown to us; but everything is at an end.  The Duchesse d’Argaiolo, now Duchesse de Rhetore, seems to me to have carried severity to an extreme.  At Belgirate, which she had left when Albert flew thither, she had left instructions leading him to believe that she was living in London.  From London Albert went in search of her to Naples, and from Naples to Rome, where she was now engaged to the Duc de Rhetore.  When Albert succeeded in seeing Madame d’Argaiolo, at Florence, it was at the ceremony of her marriage.

“Our poor friend swooned in the church, and even when he was in danger of death he could never obtain any explanation from this woman, who must have had I know not what in her heart.  For seven months Albert had traveled in pursuit