“Well,” said Renée, “I cannot help regretting you had not chosen some other profession than your own⁠—a physician, for instance. Do you know I always felt a shudder at the idea of even a destroying angel?”

“Dear, good Renée,” whispered Villefort, as he gazed with unutterable tenderness on the lovely speaker.

“Let us hope, my child,” cried the marquis, “that M. de Villefort may prove the moral and political physician of this province; if so, he will have achieved a noble work.”

“And one which will go far to efface the recollection of his father’s conduct,” added the incorrigible marquise.