"Mein Herr, I believed it."
"Yet he refused to fulfil the engagement?"
"He did."
Even Marguerite was alarmed at the deep emphasis with which this answer
was given, and, for the first time in her life, she trembled lest the
accumulating load of obloquy had indeed been too strong for her husband's
principles.
"Thou felt anger at his conduct, and at the public manner in which he
disgraced thee and thine?"
"Herr Chatelain, I am human. When Jacques Colis repudiated my daughter, he
bruised a tender plant in the girl, and he caused bitterness in a father's
heart."
"Thou hast received instruction superior to thy condition, Balthazar!"
"We are a race of executioners, but we are not the unnurtured herd that
people fancy. 'Tis the will of Berne that made me what I am, and no desire
nor wants of my own."
"The charge is honorable, as are all that come of the state," repeated the
other, with the formal readiness in which set phrases are uttered; "the
charge is honorable for one of thy birth. God assigns to each his station
on earth, and he has fixed thy duties.
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