become a murderer!" said Moretti satirically.

Young Vergniaud sprang forward.

"Monsignor, in the name of the Master you profess to serve I would
advise you to set a watch upon your tongue!" he said, "Granted that
I was willing to murder the man who had made my mother's life a
misery, I was also willing to answer to God for it! I saw my mother
die--" here he gave a quick glance towards the Abbe who
instinctively shrank at his words, "I shall pain you, my father, by
what I say, but the pain is perhaps good for us both! I repeat--I
saw my mother die. She passed away uncomforted after a long life of
patient loneliness and sorrow--for she was faithful to the last,
ever faithful! I have seen her weep in the silence of the night!--I
have heard her ever since I was able to understand the sound of
weeping! Oh, those tears!--Do you not think God has seen them! She
worked and toiled, and starved herself to educate me,--she had no
friends, for she had 'fallen', they said, and sometimes she could
get no employment, and often we starved together; and when I thought
of the man who had done this thing, even as a young boy I said to
myself, 'I will kill him!' She did not mean, poor mother, to curse
her lover to me--but unconsciously she did,--her sorrow was so
great--her loneliness so bitter!"

Moretti gave a gesture of impatience and contempt. Cyrillon noted
it, and his dark eyes flashed, but he went on steadily,--

"And then I saw her die--she stretched her poor thin hard-working
hands out to God, and over and over again she muttered and moaned in
her fever the refrain of an old peasant song we have in Touraine,