"Forgive one who
is about to die! You cannot refuse to listen to the voice of one, who
after tomorrow, will have vanished from earth forever.
"I have loved you for a long time, Marie-Anne, for more than six years.
Before I saw you, I loved only my possessions. To raise fine crops, and
to amass a fortune, seemed to me, then, the greatest possible happiness
here below.
"Why did I meet you? But at that time you were so high, and I, so low,
that never in my wildest dreams did I aspire to you. I went to church
each Sunday only that I might worship you as peasant women worship the
Blessed Virgin; I went home with my eyes and my heart full of you--and
that was all.
"Then came the misfortune that brought us nearer to each other; and your
father made me as insane, yes, as insane as himself.
"After the insults he received from the Sairmeuse, your father resolved
to revenge himself upon these arrogant nobles, and he selected me for
his accomplice. He had read my heart. On leaving the house of Baron
d'Escorval, on that Sunday evening, which you must remember, the compact
that bound me to your father was made.
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