“You are saints, and you have the calmness of saints;” said the former magistrate; “you will therefore listen to me.  I know that the vast benefits I have received during the last eighteen months have come from the hand of a person whom I grievously injured in doing my duty.  It was fifteen years before I was convinced of her innocence; and that case is the only one, gentlemen, for which I feel any remorse as to the exercise of my functions.  Listen to me!  I have but a short time to live, but I shall lose even that poor remnant of a life, still so important to my children whom Madame de la Chanterie has saved, unless she will also grant me her pardon.  Yes, I will stay there on my knees on the pavement of Notre-Dame until she says to me that word.  I, who cannot weep, whom the tortures of my child have dried like stubble, I shall find tears within me to move her—­”

The door of Madame de la Chanterie’s room opened; the Abbe de Veze glided in like a shadow and said to Monsieur Joseph:—­

“That voice is torturing Madame.”

“Ah! she is there!” exclaimed the baron.

He fell on his knees and burst into tears, crying out in a heart-rending voice:  “In the name of Jesus dying on the cross, forgive, forgive me, for my daughter has suffered a thousand deaths!”

The old man fell forward on the floor so prone that the agitated spectators thought him dead.  At that instant Madame de la Chanterie appeared like a spectre at the door of her room, against the frame of which she supported herself.

“In the name of Louis XVI. and Marie-Antoinette whom I see on their scaffold, in the name of Madame Elisabeth, in the name of my daughter and of yours, and for Jesus’ sake, I forgive you.”

Hearing those words the old man raised his head.  “It is the vengeance of angels!” he said.

Monsieur Joseph and Monsieur Nicolas raised him and led him to the courtyard; Godefroid went to fetch a carriage, and when they put the old man into it Monsieur Nicolas said to him gravely:—­

“Do not return here, monsieur; the power of God is infinite, but human nature has its limits.”

On that day Godefroid was admitted to the order of the Brotherhood of Consolation.

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy. 
The Brotherhood of Consolation is also known by the title The Seamy
Side of History and is referred to by that title in other Addendums.

Barbet
  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
  A Man of Business
  The Middle Classes

Bianchon, Horace
  Father Goriot
  The Atheist’s Mass
  Cesar Birotteau
  The Commission in Lunacy
  Lost Illusions
  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
  A Bachelor’s Establishment
  The Secrets of a Princess
  The Government Clerks
  Pierrette
  A Study of Woman