uried the captain. We
ascertained the direction they had taken and pursued them. We should
soon have been at fault in that trackless part of the country, but we
fell in with a little negro boy to whom I had been kind on more than one
occasion, and he told us that he had followed the men at a distance, and
undertook to show us the spot where our countryman had been buried. It
was not far-off, and when we reached it our indignation became greater
than ever. The authorities had evidently studied how they could most
insult and annoy us.

In a piece of waste ground where offal and rubbish was cast, and where
the bodies of the few malefactors who were ever brought to justice, as
well as those of dogs and other animals, were deposited, they had
ordered our poor friend to be interred. He had been placed there,
fastened up in a piece of canvas, without a coffin and without ceremony
of any sort. We stood with mournful countenances and with hearts full
of bitterness and indignation over the foul spot, discussing among
ourselves whether we ought not to dig up the body and carry it to the
churchyard of Ou Trou, there to bury it among others who at all events
had called themselves Christians. Our intentions must have been
suspected, for in a few minutes a guard of soldiers made their
appearance, and, threatening us with their pikes or halberds, made us
desist. We then determined to go at once to the commandant. He
received us with a look of haughty contempt. He remarked that our
countryman was a heretic--that the priests considered that he had died
out of the pale of their true Church like a dog, and that like a dog he
must be buried.

"Does the holy religion of Christ teach you thus to treat your enemies?"
exclaimed Delisle, indignantly. "We are Christians, as you call
yourselves, and have, as such, a right to Christian burial."

"I know nothing about that matter," answered the commandant. "The
priests say that you are not, that you are cut off from the only true
Church, and are thus condemned to everlasting punishment. This being
the case--and I am bound to believe it--what matters it where your
bodies are placed?"

Such was the tenor of the reply we received from an officer holding a
commission under the government of a nation which prided itself on being
the most enlightened and civilised in the world.

Though in France the outward signs of religion were still adhered to,
the _savants_ and _literati_ were alrea