ever had been aught, to her. She had no particle of
wifely feeling toward him, only a sentiment of concentrated rage, the
deep-seated hatred of the vanquished for the victor, when she thought
of him. Rather than surrender the child to him she would have killed it,
and killed herself afterward. And as she had told him, the child he had
left her as a gift of hate she would have wished were already grown and
capable of defending her; she looked into the future and beheld him with
a musket, slaughtering hecatombs of Prussians. Ah, yes! one Frenchman
more to assist in wreaking vengeance on the hereditary foe!

There was but one day remaining, however; she could not afford to waste
more time in arriving at a decision. At the very outset, indeed, a
hideous project had presented itself among the whirling thoughts that
filled her poor, disordered mind: to notify the francs-tireurs, to give
Sambuc the information he desired so eagerly; but the idea had not then
assumed definite form and shape, and she had put it from her as too
atrocious, not suffering herself even to consider it: was not that man
the father of her child? she could not be accessory to his murder. Then
the thought returned, and kept returning at more frequently recurring
intervals, little by little forcing itself upon her and enfolding her in
its unholy influence; and now it had entire possession of her, holding
her captive by the strength of its simple and unanswerable logic. The
peril and calamity that overhung them all would vanish with that man; he
in his grave, Jean, Prosper, Father Fouchard would have nothing more
to fear, while she herself would retain possession of Charlot and there
would be never a one in all the world to challenge her right to him.
All that day she turned and re-turned the project in her mind, devoid of
further strength to bid it down, considering despite herself the
murder in its different aspects, planning and arranging its most minute
details. And now it was become the one fixed, dominant idea, making a
portion of her being, that she no longer stopped to reason on, and when
finally she came to act, in obedience to that dictate of the inevitable,
she went forward as in a dream, subject to the volition of another, a
someone within her whose presence she had never known till then.

Father Fouchard had taken alarm, and on Sunday he dispatched a messenger
to the francs-tireurs to inform them that their supply of bread would
be forwarded to