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"Just God, avenging God!" lars
Villefort's only ansas a stifled groan
"But the child--the child, sir?" repeated the agitated mother
"How I have searched for hi his hands; "how I have called hied for royal wealth to purchase a million of secrets fro them! At last, one day, when for the hundredth tiain what the Corsican could have done with the child A child encu it was still alive, he had thrown it into the river"
"Ilars: "a e, but he would not deliberately drown a child"
"Perhaps," continued Villefort, "he had put it in the foundling hospital"
"Oh, yes, yes," cried the baroness; "my child is there!"
"I ran to the hospital, and learned that the saht of the 20th of Septeht there, wrapped in part of a fine linen napkin, purposely torn in half This portion of the napkin was marked with half a baron's crown, and the letter H"
"Truly, truly," said Madaonne was a baronet, and my name is Hermine Thank God, my child was not then dead!"
"No, it was not dead"
"And you can tellto ed his shoulders "Do I know?" said he; "and do you believe that if I kneould relate to you all its trials and all its adventures as would a dramatist or a novel writer? Alas, no, I know not A woman, about six months after, caave all the requisite particulars, and it was intrusted to her"
"But you should have inquired for the woman; you should have traced her"
"And what do you think I did? I feigned a criminal process, and eents in search of her They traced her to Chalons, and there they lost her"
"They lost her?"
"Yes, forever" Madah, a tear, or a shriek for every detail "And this is all?" said she; "and you stopped there?"
"Oh, no," said Villefort; "I never ceased to search and to inquire However, the last two or three years I had allowed in with es me, not my conscience"