touched it with
his lips; and half dead, holding on to the walls, she went back to the
jailer's little room. They had made up a bed for her, and she threw
herself on it, dressed as she was, and remained there, immovable, as if
she had been dead, overcome by a kind of stupor which deprived her even
of the faculty of suffering.

It was bright daylight, it was eight o'clock, when she felt somebody
pulling her sleeve. The jailer's wife said to her,--

"My dear young lady, this would be a good time for you to slip away.
Perhaps they will wonder to see you alone in the street; but they will
think you are coming home from seven o'clock mass."

Without saying a word, Dionysia jumped down, and in a moment she had
arranged her hair and her dress. Then Blangin came, rather troubled at
not seeing her leave the house; and she said to him, giving him one of
the thousand-franc rolls that were still in her bag,--

"This is for you: I want you to remember me, if I should need you
again."

And, dropping her veil over her face, she went away.

XI.

Baron Chandore had had one terrible night in his life, every minute of
which he had counted by the ebbing pulse of his only son.

The evening before, the physicians had said,--

"If he lives this night, he may be saved."

At daybreak he had expired.

Well, the old gentleman had hardly suffered more during that fatal night
than he did this night, during which Dionysia was away from the house.
He knew very well that Blangin and his wife were honest people, in
spite of their avarice and their covetousness; he knew that Jacques de
Boiscoran was an honourable man.

But still, during the whole night, his old servant heard him walk up and
down his room; and at seven o'clock in the morning he was at the door,
looking anxiously up and down the street. Towards half-past seven, M.
Folgat came up; but he hardly wished him good-morning, and he certainly
did not hear a word of what the lawyer told him to reassure him. At
last, however, the old man cried,--

"Ah, there she is!"

He was not mistaken. Dionysia was coming round the corner. She came up
to the house in feverish haste, as if she had known that her strength
was at an end, and would barely suffice to carry her to the door.

Grandpapa Chandore met her with a kind of fierce joy, pressed her in his
arms, and said over and over again,--

"O Dionysia! Oh, my darling child, how I have suffered! How long you
have been! But it is all