interrupted the scene. Nicolas twice looked back, and twice encountered
Blondet's gaze. The journalist continued to watch the tall scoundrel,
who was broad in the shoulders, healthy and vigorous in complexion, with
black hair curling tightly, and whose rather soft face showed upon
its lips and around the mouth certain lines which reveal the peculiar
cruelty that characterizes sluggards and voluptuaries. Catherine swung
her petticoat, striped blue and white, with an air of insolent coquetry.

"Cain and his wife!" said Blondet to the abbe.

"You are nearer the truth than you know," replied the priest.

"Ah! Monsieur le cure, what will they do to me?" said La Pechina, when
the brother and sister were out of sight.

The countess, as white as her handkerchief, was so overcome that she
heard neither Blondet nor the abbe nor La Pechina.

"It is enough to drive one from this terrestrial paradise," she said
at last. "But the first thing of all is to save that child from their
claws."

"You are right," said Blondet in a low voice. "That child is a poem, a
living poem."

Just then the Montenegrin girl was in a state where soul and body smoke,
as it were, after the conflagration of an anger which has driven all
forces, physical and intellectual, to their utmost tension. It is an
unspeakable and supreme splendor, which reveals itself only under the
pressure of some frenzy, be it resistance or victory, love or martyrdom.
She had left home in a dress with alternate lines of brown and yellow,
and a collarette which she pleated herself by rising before daylight;
and she had not yet noticed the condition of her gown soiled by her
struggle on the grass, and her collar torn in Catherine's grasp. Feeling
her hair hanging loose, she looked about her for a comb. At this moment
Michaud, also attracted by the screams, came upon the scene. Seeing her
god, La Pechina recovered her full strength. "Monsieur Michaud," she
cried, "he did not even touch me!"

The cry, the look, the action of the girl were an eloquent commentary,
and told more to Blondet and the abbe than Madame Michaud had told the
countess about the passion of that strange nature for the bailiff, who
was utterly unconscious of it.

"The scoundrel!" cried Michaud.

Then, with an involuntary and impotent gesture, such as mad men and wise
men can both be forced into giving, he shook his fist in the direction
in which he had caught sight of Nicolas disappearing with his siste