He rose, glanced round the
room, and slowly left it. When he reached the door he turned as a
beggar might have done and implored his daughter with a gesture, to
which she replied by a negative motion of her head.
"Farewell, my daughter," he said, gently, "may you live happy!"
When he had disappeared, Marguerite remained in a trance which
separated her from earth; she was no longer in the parlor; she lost
consciousness of physical existence; she had wings, and soared amid
the immensities of the moral world, where Thought contracts the limits
both of Time and Space, where a divine hand lifts the veil of the
Future. It seemed to her that days elapsed between each footfall of
her father as he went up the stairs; then a shudder of dread went over
her as she heard him enter his chamber. Guided by a presentiment which
flashed into her soul with the piercing keenness of lightning, she ran
up the stairway, without light, without noise, with the velocity of an
arrow, and saw her father with a pistol at his head.
"Take all!" she cried, springing towards him.
She fell into a chair. Balthazar, seeing her pallor, began to weep as
old men weep; he became like a child, he kissed her brow, he spoke in
disconnected words, he almost danced with joy, and tried to play with
her as a lover with a mistress who has made him happy.
"Enough, father, enough," she said; "remember your promise. If you do
not succeed now, you pledge yourself to obey me?"
"Yes.
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