Monsieur Gault went quickly up to his chief, and said in a whisper, “Beware of that man, Monsieur le Comte; he is mad with rage.”

Monsieur de Granville gazed slowly at Jacques Collin, and saw that he was controlling himself; but he saw, too, that what the governor said was true.  This treacherous demeanor covered the cold but terrible nervous irritation of a savage.  In Jacques Collin’s eyes were the lurid fires of a volcanic eruption, his fists were clenched.  He was a tiger gathering himself up to spring.

“Leave us,” said the Count gravely to the prison governor and the judge.

“You did wisely to send away Lucien’s murderer!” said Jacques Collin, without caring whether Camusot heard him or no; “I could not contain myself, I should have strangled him.”

Monsieur de Granville felt a chill; never had he seen a man’s eyes so full of blood, or cheeks so colorless, or muscles so set.

“And what good would that murder have done you?” he quietly asked.

“You avenge society, or fancy you avenge it, every day, monsieur, and you ask me to give a reason for revenge?  Have you never felt vengeance throbbing in surges in your veins?  Don’t you know that it was that idiot of a judge who killed him?—­For you were fond of my Lucien, and he loved you!  I know you by heart, sir.  The dear boy would tell me everything at night when he came in; I used to put him to bed as a nurse tucks up a child, and I made him tell me everything.  He confided everything to me, even his least sensations!

“The best of mothers never loved an only son so tenderly as I loved that angel!  If only you knew!  All that is good sprang up in his heart as flowers grow in the fields.  He was weak; it was his only fault, weak as the string of a lyre, which is so strong when it is taut.  These are the most beautiful natures; their weakness is simply tenderness, admiration, the power of expanding in the sunshine of art, of love, of the beauty God has made for man in a thousand shapes!—­In short, Lucien was a woman spoiled.  Oh! what could I not say to that brute beast who had just gone out of the room!

“I tell you, monsieur, in my degree, as a prisoner before his judge, I did what God A’mighty would have done for His Son if, hoping to save Him, He had gone with Him before Pilate!”

A flood of tears fell from the convict’s light tawny eyes, which just now had glared like those of a wolf starved by six months’ snow in the plains of the Ukraine.  He went on: 

“That dolt would listen to nothing, and he killed the boy!—­I tell you, sir, I bathed the child’s corpse in my tears, crying out to the Power I do not know, and which is above us all!  I, who do not believe in God!—­(For if I were not a materialist, I should not be myself.)