ingled its bleat with the last bleat of the clock.

He had strength enough to look. It was she.

She was pale, she was gloomy. Her hair fell over her shoulders as in the
morning; but there was no longer a rope on her neck, her hands were no
longer bound; she was free, she was dead.

She was dressed in white and had a white veil on her head.

She came towards him, slowly, with her gaze fixed on the sky. The
supernatural goat followed her. He felt as though made of stone and
too heavy to flee. At every step which she took in advance, he took one
backwards, and that was all. In this way he retreated once more beneath
the gloomy arch of the stairway. He was chilled by the thought that she
might enter there also; had she done so, he would have died of terror.

She did arrive, in fact, in front of the door to the stairway, and
paused there for several minutes, stared intently into the darkness, but
without appearing to see the priest, and passed on. She seemed taller
to him than when she had been alive; he saw the moon through her white
robe; he heard her breath.

When she had passed on, he began to descend the staircase again, with
the slowness which he had observed in the spectre, believing himself to
be a spectre too, haggard, with hair on end, his extinguished lamp still
in his hand; and as he descended the spiral steps, he distinctly heard
in his ear a voice laughing and repeating,--

"A spirit passed before my face, and I heard a small voice, and the hair
of my flesh stood up."

CHAPTER II. HUNCHBACKED, ONE EYED, LAME.

Every city during the Middle Ages, and every city in France down to the
time of Louis XII. had its places of asylum. These sanctuaries, in the
midst of the deluge of penal and barbarous jurisdictions which inundated
the city, were a species of islands which rose above the level of human
justice. Every criminal who landed there was safe. There were in every
suburb almost as many places of asylum as gallows. It was the abuse of
impunity by the side of the abuse of punishment; two bad things which
strove to correct each other. The palaces of the king, the hotels of
the princes, and especially churches, possessed the right of asylum.
Sometimes a whole city which stood in need of being repeopled was
temporarily created a place of refuge. Louis XI. made all Paris a refuge
in 1467.

His foot once within the asylum, the criminal was sacred; but he must
beware of leaving it; one step outsid