ose head was horribly
fractured. It required desperate exertions to snatch her from his grasp
and manacle him. After a determined resistance they at length conveyed
him into the low parlour of the cabaret, a large dark room, lighted by a
solitary window. There, handcuffed and guarded, were Barbillon, Nicholas
Martial, his mother and sister. They had been apprehended at the very
moment when laying violent hands on the jewel-matcher to cut her throat.
She was recovering herself in another room. Stretched on the ground, and
hardly restrained by two men, the Schoolmaster, slightly wounded, but
quite deranged, was roaring like a wild bull.

Barbillon, with his head hanging down, his face ghastly, lead-coloured,
his lips colourless, eye fixed and savage, his long and straight hair
falling on the collar of his blouse, torn in the struggle, was seated
on a bench, his wrists, enclosed in handcuffs, resting on his knees. The
juvenile appearance of this fellow (he was scarcely eighteen years of
age), the regularity of his beardless features, already emaciated and
withered, were rendered still more deplorable by the hideous stamp which
debauchery and crime had imprinted on his physiognomy. Impassive, he did
not say a word. It could not be determined whether this apparent
insensibility was owing to stupor or to a calm energy; his breathing was
rapid, and, at times, he wiped away the perspiration from his pale brow
with his fettered hands.

By his side was Calabash, whose cap had been torn off, and her yellowish
hair, tied behind with a piece of tape, hung down in several scanty and
tangled meshes. More savage than subdued, her thin and bilious cheeks
were somewhat suffused, as she looked disdainfully at her brother,
Nicholas, who was in a chair in front of her. Anticipating the fate that
awaited him, this scoundrel was dejected. With drooping head and
trembling knees he was overcome with fright; his teeth chattered
convulsively, and he heaved heavy groans.

The Mother Martial, the only one unmoved, exhibited every proof that she
had lost nothing of her accustomed audacity. With head erect, she looked
unshrinkingly around her. However, at the sight of Bras-Rouge,--whom
they brought into the low room, after having made him accompany the
commissary and his clerk in the minute search they had made all over the
place,--the widow's features contracted, in spite of herself, and her
small and usually dull eyes lighted up like those of an