“What is the matter?” the magistrate inquired.

“Oh! this dastardly wretch is profiting by his knowledge of secrets which a long intimacy has enabled him to discover.  Do not believe him, I entreat you, do not believe him!”

Derues resumed.  “Madame de Lamotte continued:  ’I saw him again sixteen years ago, always in hiding, always proscribed.  To-day he reappears under a name which is not his own:  he wishes to link my fate with his; he has insisted on seeing Edouard.  But I shall escape him.  I have invented this fiction of placing my son among the, royal pages to account for my stay here.  Do not contradict me, but help me; for a little time ago I met one of Monsieur de Lamotte’s friends, I am afraid he suspected something.  Say you have seen me several times; as you have come, let it be known that you brought Edouard here.  I shall return to Buisson as soon as possible, but will you go first, see my husband, satisfy him if he is anxious?  I am in your hands; my honour, my reputation, my very life, are at your mercy; you can either ruin or help to save me.  I may be guilty, but I am not corrupt.  I have wept for my sin day after day, and I have already cruelly expiated it.’”

This execrable calumny was not related without frequent interruptions on the part of Monsieur de Lamotte.  He was, however, obliged to own to himself that it was quite true that Marie Perier had really been promised to a man whom an unlucky affair had driven into exile, and whom he had supposed to be dead.  This revelation, coming from Derues, who had the strongest interest in lying, by no means convinced him of his wife’s dishonour, nor destroyed the feelings of a husband and father; but Derues was not speaking for him lone, and what appeared incredible to Monsieur de Lamotte might easily seem less improbable to the colder and less interested judgment of the magistrate.

“I was wrong,” Derues continued, “in allowing myself to be touched by her tears, wrong in believing in her repentance, more wrong still in going to Buisson to satisfy her husband.  But I only consented on conditions:  Madame de Lamotte promised me to return shortly to Paris, vowing that her son should never know the truth, and that the rest of her life should be devoted to atoning for her sin by a boundless devotion.  She then begged me to leave her, and told me she would write to me at Paris to fix the day of her return.  This is what happened, and this is why I went to Buissan and gave my support to a lying fiction.  With one word I might have destroyed the happiness of seventeen years.  I did not wish to do so.  I believed in the remorse; I believe in it still, in spite of all appearances; I have refused to speak this very day, and made every effort to prolong an illusion which I know it will be terrible to lose.”