e,
when, suddenly, the women who were walking ahead and who had already
turned into the high-road fell back with loud cries of dismay.

At the same moment, an enormous motor-car, looking like some appalling
monster, came tearing into sight at a headlong rate of speed. Amid the
shouts of the madly scattering people, it made straight for the church,
swerved, just as it seemed about to dash itself to pieces against the
steps, grazed the wall of the presbytery, regained the continuation of
the national road, dashed along, turned the corner and disappeared,
without, by some incomprehensible miracle, having so much as brushed
against any of the persons crowding the square.

But they had seen! They had seen a man in the driver's seat, wrapped in
a goat-skin coat, with a fur cap on his head and his face disguised in a
pair of large goggles, and, with him, on the front of that seat, flung
back, bent in two, a woman whose head, all covered with blood, hung down
over the bonnet....

And they had heard! They had heard the woman's screams, screams of
horror, screams of agony....

And it was all such a vision of hell and carnage that the people stood,
for some seconds, motionless, stupefied.

"Blood!" roared somebody.

There was blood everywhere, on the cobblestones of the square, on the
ground hardened by the first frosts of autumn; and, when a number of men
and boys rushed off in pursuit of the motor, they had but to take those
sinister marks for their guide.

The marks, on their part, followed the high-road, but in a very strange
manner, going from one side to the other and leaving a zigzag track, in
the wake of the tires, that made those who saw it shudder. How was it
that the car had not bumped against that tree? How had it been righted,
instead of smashing into that bank? What novice, what madman, what
drunkard, what frightened criminal was driving that motor-car with such
astounding bounds and swerves?

One of the peasants declared:

"They will never do the turn in the forest."

And another said:

"Of course they won't! She's bound to upset!"

The Forest of Morgues began at half a mile beyond Saint-Nicolas; and the
road, which was straight up to that point, except for a slight bend
where it left the village, started climbing, immediately after entering
the forest, and made an abrupt turn among the rocks and trees. No
motor-car was able to take this turn without first slackening speed.
There were posts to give n