to the door.

"But who will give him burial?" exclaimed Philip.

"I will; go!" replied the abbe.

Antoinette and Philip were compelled to obey.

The priest was left alone with the lifeless body of M. de Chamondrin. He
knelt, and, as calmly as if he were in his own presbytery, recited the
prayers the church addresses to Heaven for the souls of the dead. The
flickering light of a nearly consumed candle dimly illumined the room.
The world without was bathed in a flood of clear moonlight. The
marauders ran about the park, shouting at the top of their voices,
uprooting plants and shrubbery, breaking the statuary and the marble
vases, and expending upon inanimate objects the fury they were unable to
vent upon the living.

Suddenly, one of them discovered the summer-house. The door was open; he
entered. Some of his comrades followed him. A priest with white, flowing
locks rose at their entrance, and, pointing to the couch upon which the
dead body of the Marquis was reposing, said:

"Death has passed this way! Retire--"

He was not allowed to complete his sentence. A violent blow from an axe
felled him to the ground, his skull, fractured. They trampled his body
under foot, then one of the assassins applied a burning torch to the
floor. The flames rose, licking each portion of the building with their
fiery tongues. Then the shameless crowd departed to continue their work
of destruction. The sacking of the chateau occupied three hours. The
pillagers had not retired when the approach of the National Guard of
Remoulins, coming too late to the assistance of the Marquis, was
discovered by one of the ruffians, and they fled in every direction to
escape the punishment they merited.

When Coursegol, wild with anxiety, reached the chateau on the day that
followed this frightful scene, only the walls remained standing. Of the
imposing edifice in which he was born there was left only bare and
crumbling walls. The farm-house and the summer-house had shared the same
fate; and in the park, thickly strewn with prostrate trees and debris, a
crowd of gypsies and beggars were searching for valuables spared by the
fire. Coursegol could not repress a cry of rage and despair at the
sight; but how greatly his sorrow was augmented when he learned that two
dead bodies, those of the Marquis and of the Abbe Peretty had been
discovered half-consumed in the still smoking ruins.

Were Philip and Antoinette also dead? No one knew.

One person de