uenot; 'many of the innocents were
with their mothers in yonder church. Better for them to perish like the
babes of Bethlehem than to be bred up in the house of Baal; but perhaps
Monsieur is English, and if so he might yet obtain the child. Yet he
must not hope too much.'

'No, for there was many a little corpse among those we buried,' said the
fisher. 'Will the gentleman see the place?'

'Oh, no!' exclaimed Philip, understanding the actions, and indeed many
of the words; 'this place will kill him.'

'To the grave,' said Berenger, as if he heard nothing.

'See,' added Philip, 'there are better things than graves,' and he
pointed to a young green sucker of a vine, which, stimulated by the
burnt soil, had shot up between the tiles of the floor. 'Look, there is
hope to meet you even here.'

Berenger merely answered by gathering a leaf from the vine and putting
it into his bosom; and Philip, whom only extreme need could have thus
inspired, perceived that he accepted it as the augury of hope.

Berenger turned to bid the two men bear the cradle with them, and then
followed the old man out into the PLACE, once a pleasant open paved
square, now grass-grown and forlorn. On one side lay the remains of the
church. The Huguenots had been so predominant at La Sablerie as to
have engrossed the building, and it had therefore shared the general
destruction, and lay in utter, desolate ruin, a mere shell, and the once
noble spire, the mariner's guiding star, blown up with gun-cruel that
ever desolated the country. Beyond lay the burial-ground, in unspeakable
dreariness. The crossed of the Catholic dead had been levelled by the
fanaticism of the Huguenots, and though a great dominant stone cross
raised on steps had been re-erected, it stood uneven, tottering and
desolate among nettles, weeds, and briers. There seemed to have been a
few deep trenches dug to receive the bodies of the many victims of the
siege, and only rudely and slightly filled in with loose earth, on which
Philippe treading had nearly sunk in, so much to his horror that he
could hardly endure the long contemplation in which his brother stood
gazing on the dismal scene, as if to bear it away with him. Did the fair
being he had left in a king's palace sleep her last sleep her last sleep
amid the tangled grass, the thistles and briers that grew so close
that it was hardly possible to keep from stumbling over them, where all
memorials of friend or foe were alike obliter