"Parricide! you! Oh, fatal day! of what are you going to inform me?"

"It is necessary that you should know, in this awful moment, all the evils
caused by your implacable ambition, by your unbounded selfishness. Do you
understand me, woman without heart and without conscience? Do you hear me,
unnatural mother?"

"Oh, have pity, Rudolph!"

"No pardon for you, who formerly, without pity for a sincere love, coldly
trifled, in the furtherance of your execrable pride, with a generous and
devoted passion, of which you feigned to partake. No mercy for you, who
armed the son against the father! No grace for you, who, instead of
watching piously over your child, abandoned her to mercenary hands, in
order to satisfy your cupidity by a rich marriage, as you had already
served your mad ambition by inciting me to marry you. No mercy for you who,
after having refused me my child, have now caused her death by your unholy
deceptions! Maledictions on you--my evil genius, and my family's!"

"Oh! he is without pity! leave me! leave me!"

"You must hear me, I tell you! Do you remember the last day I saw you--it
is seventeen years since--you could no longer conceal the fruits of our
secret union, which, like you, I believed indissoluble. I knew the
inflexible character of my father. I knew what political marriage he
projected for me. Braving his indignation, I declared to him that you were
my wife before God and before man--that in a short time I should become a
father. His anger was terrible; he would not give credence to my
marriage--so much deception seemed impossible to him. He threatened me with