’But I don’t repent it, Uncle Michel; I don’t, indeed.  I can’t repent it.  How can I repent it when I really mean it?  I shall never become his wife;—­indeed I shall not.  O, Uncle Michel, pray, pray, pray do not go to Basle!’

But Michel Voss resolved that he would go to Basle, and to Basle he went.  The immediate weight, too, of Marie’s misery was aggravated by the fact that in order to catch the train for Basle at Colmar, her uncle need not start quite immediately.  There was an hour during which he could continue to exercise his eloquence upon his niece, and endeavour to induce her to authorise him to contradict her own letter.  He appealed first to her affection, and then to her duty; and after that, having failed in these appeals, he poured forth the full vials of his wrath upon her head.  She was ungrateful, obstinate, false, unwomanly, disobedient, irreligious, sacrilegious, and an idiot.  In the fury of his anger, there was hardly any epithet of severe rebuke which he spared, and yet, as every cruel word left his mouth, he assured her that it should all be taken to mean nothing, if she would only now tell him that he might nullify the letter.  Though she had deserved all these bad things which he had spoken of her, yet she should be regarded as having deserved none of them, should again be accepted as having in all points done her duty, if she would only, even now, be obedient.  But she was not to be shaken.  She had at last formed a resolution, and her uncle’s words had no effect towards turning her from it.  ‘Uncle Michel,’ she said at last, speaking with much seriousness of purpose, and a dignity of person that was by no means thrown away upon him, ’if I am what you say, I had better go away from your house.  I know I have been bad.  I was bad to say that I would marry M. Urmand.  I will not defend myself.  But nothing on earth shall make me marry him.  You had better let me go away, and get a place as a servant among our friends at Epinal.’  But Michel Voss, though he was heaping abuse upon her with the hope that he might thus achieve his purpose, had not the remotest idea of severing the connection which bound him and her together.  He wanted to do her good, not evil.  She was exquisitely dear to him.  If she would only let him have his way and provide for her welfare as he saw, in his wisdom, would be best, he would at once take her in his arms again and tell her that she was the apple of his eye.  But she would not; and he went at last off on his road to Colmar and Basle, gnashing his teeth in anger.

CHAPTER XVI.

Nothing was said to Marie about her sins on that afternoon after her uncle had started on his journey.  Everything in the hotel was blank, and sad, and gloomy; but there was, at any rate, the negative comfort of silence, and Marie was allowed to go about the house and do her work without rebuke.  But she observed that the Cure—­M. le Cure Gondin—­sat much with her aunt during the evening, and she did not doubt but that she herself and her iniquities made the subject of their discourse.