He paused an instant, then he added: 

“I have said openly, before numerous witnesses, that I would never set foot in a house that had been given you by Chanlouineau.”

“Jean! you, my brother! said that?”

“I said it.  It must be supposed that there is a deadly feud between us.  This must be, in order that neither you nor Maurice d’Escorval can be accused of complicity in any deed of mine.”

Marie-Anne stood as if petrified.

“He is mad!” she murmured.

“Do I really have that appearance?”

She shook off the stupor that paralyzed her, and seizing her brother’s hands: 

“What do you intend to do?” she exclaimed.  “What do you intend to do?  Tell me; I will know.”

“Nothing! let me alone.”

“Jean!”

“Let me alone,” he said, roughly, disengaging himself.

A horrible presentiment crossed Marie-Anne’s mind.

She stepped back, and solemnly, entreatingly, she said: 

“Take care, take care, my brother.  It is not well to tamper with these matters.  Leave to God’s justice the task of punishing those who have wronged us.”

But nothing could move Jean Lacheneur, or divert him from his purpose.  He uttered a hoarse, discordant laugh, then striking his gun heavily with his hand, he exclaimed: 

“Here is justice!”

Appalled and distressed beyond measure, Marie-Anne sank into a chair.  She discerned in her brother’s mind the same fixed, fatal idea which had lured her father on to destruction—­the idea for which he had sacrificed all—­family, friends, fortune, the present and the future—­even his daughter’s honor—­the idea which had caused so much blood to flow, which had cost the life of so many innocent men, and which had finally conducted him to the scaffold.

“Jean,” she murmured, “remember our father.”

The young man’s face became livid; his hands clinched involuntarily, but he controlled his anger.

Advancing toward his sister, in a cold, quiet tone that added a frightful violence to his threats, he said: 

“It is because I remember my father that justice shall be done.  Ah! these miserable nobles would not display such audacity if all sons had my resolution.  A scoundrel would hesitate before attacking a good man if he was obliged to say to himself:  ’I cannot strike this honest man, for though he die, his children will surely call me to account.  Their fury will fall on me and mine; they will pursue us sleeping and waking, pursue us without ceasing, everywhere, and pitilessly.  Their hatred always on the alert, will accompany us and surround us.  It will be an implacable, merciless warfare.  I shall never venture forth without fearing a bullet; I shall never lift food to my lips without dread of poison.  And until we have succumbed, they will prowl about our house, trying to slip in through tiniest opening, death, dishonor, ruin, infamy, and misery!’”