decease. At this time, Madame Seraphin entered the service of Jacques
Ferrand, after having delivered our child to La Chouette by the hands of a
wretch now in the galleys at Rochefort. I began to write this confession of
La Chouette when she wounded me. This paper is there, with a portrait of
our daughter at the age of four years. Examine all--letters, confessions,
portrait--and you, who have seen her--this unfortunate child--judge."

At these words, which exhausted her strength, Sarah fell back almost
lifeless in her chair. Rudolph was thunderstruck at this revelation. There
are some misfortunes so unlooked for, so horrible, that we are unwilling to
believe them until compelled by overwhelming evidence. Rudolph, persuaded
of the death of Fleur-de-Marie, had but one hope left, which was to
convince himself that she was not his child. With a frightful calmness,
which alarmed Sarah, he approached the table, opened the casket, and fell
to reading the letters one by one, and examining, with scrupulous
attention, the papers which accompanied them. These letters, stamped at the
post-office, written to Sarah and her brother by the notary and by Madame
Seraphin, related to the childhood of Fleur-de-Marie, and to the investment
of the funds destined for her support. Rudolph could not doubt the
authenticity of this correspondence. The confession of La Chouette was
confirmed by the information obtained (of which we have spoken at the
commencement of this story) by order of Rudolph, which pointed out a man
named Pierre Tournemine, a prisoner at Rochefort, as the man who had
received Fleur-de-Marie from Madame Seraphin to deliver her to La
Chouette--to La Chouette, whom the unfortunate child herself had recognized
before Rudolph, at the tapis-franc of the Ogress. Rudolph could no longer
doubt the identity of these persons and of the Goualeuse. The official
notice concerning her death appeared in conformity to law; but Ferrand had
himself acknowledged to Cecily that this forged notice had served for the
spoliation of a considerable sum formerly settled as an annuity on the girl