The servants, having communicated this piece of wild intelligence,
instantly rushed into the house and repeated it to the household,
filling the mansion in a few moments with shrieks and confusion.
It was in vain Hortense and Agathe La Corne St. Luc strove to
withhold the terrible truth from Amelie. Her friends endeavored
with kindly force and eager exhortations to prevent her coming to
the balcony, but she would not be stayed; in her excitement she had
the strength of one of God's angels. She had caught enough of the
speech of the servants to gather up its sense into a connected
whole, and in a moment of terrible enlightenment, that came like a
thunderbolt driven through her soul, she understood the whole
significance of their tidings.
Her hapless brother, maddened with disappointment, drink, and
desperation, had killed the father of Pierre, the father of her
betrothed husband, his own friend and hers; why or how, was a
mystery of amazement.
She saw at a glance all the ruin of it. Her brother a murderer, the
Bourgeois a bleeding corpse.
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