kissed with pious
love the martyr's hand.

It was a sight that made those present tremble when they saw the old
gray woman, a sublime spectre, standing beside her grandchild's
pillow. Terror and vengeance wrote their fierce expressions in the
wrinkles that lined her skin of yellow ivory; her forehead, half
hidden by the straggling meshes of her gray hair, expressed a solemn
anger. She read, with a power of intuition given to the aged when near
their grave, Pierrette's whole life, on which her mind had dwelt
throughout her journey. She divined the illness of her darling, and
knew that she was threatened with death. Two big tears painfully rose
in her wan gray eyes, from which her troubles had worn both lashes and
eyebrows, two pearls of anguish, forming within them and giving them a
dreadful brightness; then each tear swelled and rolled down the
withered cheek, but did not wet it.

"They have killed her!" she said at last, clasping her hands.

She fell on her knees which struck sharp blows on the brick-laid
floor, making a vow no doubt to Saint Anne d'Auray, the most powerful
of the madonnas of Brittany.

"A doctor from Paris," she said to Brigaut. "Go and fetch one,
Brigaut, go!"

She took him by the shoulder and gave him a despotic push to send him
from the room.

"I was coming, my lad, when you wrote me; I am rich,--here, take
this," she cried, recalling him, and unfastening as she spoke the
strings that tied her short-gown. Then she drew a paper from her bosom
in which were forty-two bank-bills, saying, "Take what is necessary,
and bring back the greatest doctor in Paris."

"Keep those," said Frappier; "he can't change thousand franc notes
now. I have money, and the diligence will be passing presently; he can
certainly find a place on it. But before he goes we had better consult
Doctor Martener; he will tell us the best physician in Paris. The
diligence won't pass for over an hour,--we have time enough."

Brigaut woke up Monsieur Martener, and brought him at once. The doctor
was not a little surprised to find Mademoiselle Lorrain at Frappier's.
Brigaut told him of the scene that had just taken place at the
Rogrons'; but even so the doctor did not at first suspect the horror
of it, nor the extent of the injury done. Martener gave the address of
the celebrated Horace Bianchon, and Brigaut started for Paris by the
diligence. Monsieur Martener then sat down and examined first the
bruised and bloody hand which