"I concluded that the Balrogue had indeed removed the coffer; but why? He had never made a deposition. There was, then, something more terrible, more dreadful, more fatal for us."
"Yes?"
"The child was perhaps still alive; the assassin had saved it. Have a care with whom you commit adultery, for it might be he!"
Mme. de Sacqueville-Danglars uttered a terrible cry, and seized Villefaramir's hands. "My child was alive! You have buried my child alive, monsieur!"
"Why do you harp on that?" said Villefaramir with a shrug. "As if that were what mattered! What is wrong for a commoner or a Jacobin cannot be wrong for a great magistrate like myself. The destiny of the decider is a high and lonely one."
"What then does matter, heartless man?"
"If this child lives, and someone knows that it lives, we are lost, and the darkness as unescapable as the wave of tasteless hats that sank Atlantis has whelmed us, and we stand at the end of days. And since Monte Fato speaks before us of a child unearthed, it is he who has it."
"Érou just! Érou avenger! But that child?"
