Chupin did Mme. Blanche great injustice.  The movement of horror which he had observed was the instinctive revolt of the flesh, and not a faltering of her inflexible will.

Her reflections were not of a nature to appease her rancor.

Whatever Chupin and all Sairmeuse might say to the contrary, Blanche regarded this story of Marie-Anne’s travels as a ridiculous fable.  In her opinion, Marie-Anne had simply emerged from the retreat where Martial had deemed it prudent to conceal her.

But why this sudden reappearance?  The vindictive woman was ready to swear that it was out of mere bravado, and intended only as an insult to her.

“And I will have my revenge,” she thought.  “I would tear my heart out if it were capable of cowardly weakness under such provocation!”

The voice of conscience was unheard in this tumult of passion.  Her sufferings, and Jean Lacheneur’s attempt upon her father’s life seemed to justify the most extreme measures.

She had plenty of time now to brood over her wrongs, and to concoct schemes of vengeance.  Her father no longer required her care.  He had passed from the frenzied ravings of insanity and delirium to the stupor of idiocy.

The physician declared his patient cured.

Cured!  The body was cured, perhaps, but reason had succumbed.  All traces of intelligence had disappeared from this once mobile face, so ready to assume any expression which the most consummate hypocrisy required.

There was no longer a sparkle in the eye which had formerly gleamed with cunning, and the lower lip hung with a terrible expression of stupidity.

And there was no hope of any improvement.

A single passion, the table, took the place of all the passions which had formerly swayed the life of this ambitious man.

The marquis, who had always been temperate in his habits, now ate and drank with the most disgusting voracity, and he was becoming immensely corpulent.  A soulless body, he wandered about the chateau and its surroundings without projects, without aim.  Self-consciousness, all thought of dignity, knowledge of good and evil, memory—­he had lost all these.  Even the instinct of self-preservation, the last which dies within us, had departed, and he had to be watched like a child.

Often, as the marquis roamed about the large gardens, his daughter regarded him from her window with a strange terror in her heart.

But this warning of Providence only increased her desire for revenge.

“Who would not prefer death to such a misfortune?” she murmured.  “Ah!  Jean Lacheneur’s revenge is far more terrible than it would have been had his bullet pierced my father’s heart.  It is a revenge like this that I desire.  It is due me; I will have it!”

She saw Chupin every two or three days; sometimes going to the place of meeting alone, sometimes accompanied by Aunt Medea.