I swear to you that Pierre Troubetskoi's letter, written to my dead sister, was written in ignorance of her marriage with you.

The frightful scenes of the carnage of Paris had tossed us to and fro, and the careless destruction of the envelope, addressed to my sister under her maiden name, prevented me from proving her innocence as a wife.
Pierre Troubetskoi had long known my father, who had been an attache in Russia.

He was Valerie's knightly suitor.

And he fell into the estates which now burden me with wealth, while absent upon the Czar's secret affairs.

My gallant old father was sacrificed to the frenzy of the time; his soldier's face betrayed him, his rosette of the Legion doomed him, Troubetskoi's letter to our father demanding Valerie's hand was returned to the writer, through the Russian Legation, a year later, after the reorganization of the Paris Post-office.