Now that my hours are numbered, I may reveal the secret of my soul and of my life.

Now, I can venture to tell you how ardently I have loved you--how much I still love you." Involuntarily Marie-Anne drew away her hand and stepped back.
This outburst of passion, at such a moment, seemed at once unspeakably sad and frightful.
"Have I, then, offended you ?" said Chanlouineau, sadly.

"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.