“And I myself handed her over to him!” he repeated for the thousandth time,—­“I, her only friend upon earth!  And her confidence in me was so great, that, if she had any presentiment, she suppressed it for my sake.”

Daniel had, to be sure, a certain assurance now, that Maxime de Brevan would not be able to escape from justice.  But what did it profit him to be avenged, when it was too late, long after Henrietta should have been forced to seek in suicide the only refuge from Brevan’s persecution?  Now it seemed to him as if the magistrate was far more anxiously concerned for the punishment of the guilty than for the safety of the victims.  Blinded by passion, so as to ask for impossibilities, Daniel would have had this lawyer, who was so clever in unearthing crimes committed in Saigon, find means rather to prevent the atrocious crime which was now going on in France.  On his part, he had done the only thing that could be done.

At the first glimpse of reason that had appeared after his terrible sufferings, he had hastened to write to Henrietta, begging her to take courage, and promising her that he would soon be near her.  In this letter he had enclosed the sum of four thousand francs.

This letter was gone.  But how long would it take before it could reach her?  Three or four months, perhaps even more.

Would it reach her in time?  Might it not be intercepted, like the others?  All these anxieties made a bed of burning coals of the couch of the poor wounded man.  He twisted and turned restlessly from side to side, and felt as if he were once more going to lose his senses.  And still, by a prodigious effort of his will, his convalescence pursued its normal, steady way in spite of so many contrary influences.

A fortnight after Crochard’s confession, Daniel could get up; he spent the afternoon in an arm-chair, and was even able to take a few steps in his chamber.  The next week he was able to get down into the garden of the hospital, and to walk about there, leaning on the arm of his faithful Lefloch.  And with his strength and his health, hope, also, began to come back; when, all of a sudden, two letters from Henrietta rekindled the fever.

In one the poor girl told him how she had lived so far on the money obtained from the sale of the little jewelry she had taken with her, but added that she was shamefully cheated, and would soon be compelled to seek employment of some sort in order to support herself.

“I am quite sure,” she said, with a kind of heartrending cheerfulness, “that I can earn my forty cents a day; and with that, my friend, I shall be as happy as a queen, and wait for your return, free from want.”

In the other she wrote,—­

“None of my efforts to procure work has so far succeeded.  The future is getting darker and darker.  Soon I shall be without bread.  I shall struggle on to the last extremity, were it only not to give my enemies the joy of seeing me dead.  But, Daniel, if you wish to see your Henrietta again, come back; oh, come back!”