The marquis, meanwhile, whose indefatigable search after Julia failed
of success, was successively the slave of alternate passions, and he
poured forth the spleen of disappointment on his unhappy domestics.

The marchioness, who may now more properly be called Maria de
Vellorno, inflamed, by artful insinuations, the passions already
irritated, and heightened with cruel triumph his resentment towards
Julia and Madame de Menon. She represented, what his feelings too
acutely acknowledged,--that by the obstinate disobedience of the
first, and the machinations of the last, a priest had been enabled to
arrest his authority as a father--to insult the sacred honor of his
nobility--and to overturn at once his proudest schemes of power and
ambition. She declared it her opinion, that the Abate was acquainted
with the place of Julia's present retreat, and upbraided the marquis
with want of spirit in thus submitting to be outwitted by a priest,
and forbearing an appeal to the pope, whose authority would compel the
Abate to restore Julia.

This reproach stung the very soul of the marquis; he felt all its
force, and was at the same time conscious of his inability to obviate
it. The effect of his crimes now fell in severe punishment upon his
own head. The threatened secret, which was no other than the
imprisonment of the marchioness, arrested his arm of vengeance, and
compelled him to submit to insult and disappointment. But the reproach
of Maria sunk deep in his mind; it fomented his pride into redoubled
fury, and he now repelled with disdain the idea of submission.