can give sufficient assurance that she has not been an accomplice? What does she care for her father's death? It is only for the murderer's sake that her tears flow so freely."—"What do you say?" cried de Scuderi, "it is impossible. Would this poor blameless child aim against her father's life?" "Oh, ho!" said Regnie, shrugging his shoulders, "your ladyship seems to have forgotten the conduct of la Brinvilliers. You will be so good as to forgive me, if I find myself, ere long, necessitated to drag this favorite from your protecting arms, and to lodge her in the Conciergerie."
At this horrible suggestion, a cold shuddering pervaded the whole frame of the kind-hearted de Scuderi. It seemed to her as if, in the presence of this abominable man, all truth and virtue were annihilated; that in every heart he could find out concealed propensities to the most diabolical crimes. "At all events, do not forget that even a judge ought to be humane!" said she, and these words were all that, with a faltering and suppressed voice, she was able to bring out.—When just on the point of descending the staircase to which the president, with ceremonious politeness, accompanied her, a sudden thought rose in her mind. "Would it be granted me," said she, "to speak with the unhappy youth in prison?" The president hearing this abrupt question, looked at her with an air of doubt and reflection; then his visage twisted itself into an ironical smile, which was to him quite peculiar. "Certainly," answered he, "this may be allowed. I perceive, my lady, that you are yet more inclined to trust to your own benevolent impulses, than to any legal proofs; and as you wish to try Brusson after your own manner, within two hours hence, the gates of the Conciergerie shall be opened, and this criminal ordered to attend you. Think, however, whether it will not be too abhorrent to your feelings to enter these dark abodes of profligacy and punishment, where you may encounter vice in its varied stages of suffering and degradation."
In truth, however, de Scuderi would by no means be con-
