“You cannot doubt Jacques, grandpapa!” she cried.

“No,” murmured the old gentleman feebly, “no.”

“And you, M. Folgat—­are you so much hurt by Jacques’s desire to consult another lawyer?”

“I should have been the first, madam, to advise him to consult a native.”

Dionysia had to summon all her energy to check her tears.

“Yes,” she said, “this letter is terrible; but how can it be otherwise?  Don’t you see that Jacques is in despair, that his mind wanders after all these fearful shocks?”

Somebody knocked gently at the door.

“It is I,” said the marchioness.

Grandpapa Chandore, M. Folgat, and Dionysia looked at each other for a moment; and then the advocate said,—­

“The situation is too serious:  we must consult the marchioness.”  He rose to open the door.  Since the three friends had been holding the council in the baron’s study, a servant had come five times in succession to knock at the door, and tell them that the soup was on the table.

“Very well,” they had replied each time.

At last, as they did not come down yet, Jacques’s mother had come to the conclusion that something extraordinary had occurred.

“Now, what could this be, that they should keep it from her?” she thought.  If it were something good, they would not have concealed it from her.  She had come up stairs, therefore, with the firm resolution to force them to let her come in.  When M. Folgat opened the door, she said instantly,—­

“I mean to know all!”

Dionysia replied to her,—­

“Whatever you may hear, my dear mother, pray remember, that if you allow a single word to be torn from you, by joy or by sorrow, you cause the ruin of an honest man, who has put us all under such obligations as can never be fully discharged.  I have been fortunate enough to establish a correspondence between Jacques and us.”

“O Dionysia!”

“I have written to him, and I have received his answer.  Here it is.”

The marchioness was almost beside herself, and eagerly snatched at the letter.  But, as she read on, it was fearful to see how the blood receded from her face, how her eyes grew dim, her lips turned pale, and at last her breath failed to come.  The letter slipped from her trembling hands; she sank into a chair, and said, stammering,—­

“It is no use to struggle any longer:  we are lost!”

There was something grand in Dionysia’s gesture and the admirable accent of her voice, as she said,—­

“Why don’t you say at once, my mother, that Jacques is an incendiary and an assassin?”

Raising her head with an air of dauntless energy, with trembling lips, and fierce glances full of wrath and disdain, she added,—­

“And do I really remain the only one to defend him,—­him, who, in his days of prosperity, had so many friends?  Well, so be it!”

Naturally, M. Folgat had been less deeply moved than either the marchioness or M. de Chandore; and hence he was also the first to recover his calmness.