ust in
time to see a cabriolet enter the court-yard, and the horse, panting,
exhausted, and flecked with foam, miss his footing, and fall.

Abbe Midon and Maurice had already leaped to the ground and were lifting
out an apparently lifeless body.

Even Marie-Anne's great energy had not been able to resist so many
successive shocks; the last trial had overwhelmed her. Once in the
carriage, all immediate danger having disappeared, the excitement which
had sustained her fled. She became unconscious, and all the efforts of
Maurice and of the priest had failed to restore her.

But Mme. d'Escorval did not recognize Mlle. Lacheneur in the masculine
habiliments in which she was clothed.

She only saw that it was not her husband whom they had brought with
them; and a convulsive shudder shook her from head to foot.

"Your father, Maurice!" she exclaimed, in a stifled voice; "and your
father!"

The effect was terrible. Until that moment, Maurice and the cure had
comforted themselves with the hope that M. d'Escorval would reach home
before them.

Maurice tottered, and almost dropped his precious burden. The abbe
perceived it, and at a sign from him, two servants gently lifted
Marie-Anne, and bore her to the house.

Then the cure approached Mme. d'Escorval.

"Monsieur will soon be here, Madame," said he, at hazard; "he fled
first----"

"Baron d'Escorval could not have fled," she interrupted. "A general
does not desert when face to face with the enemy. If a panic seizes his
soldiers, he rushes to the front, and either leads them back to combat,
or takes his own life."

"Mother!" faltered Maurice; "mother!"

"Oh! do not try to deceive me. My husband was the organizer of this
conspiracy--his confederates beaten and dispersed must have proved
themselves cowards. God have mercy upon me; my husband is dead!"

In spite of the abbe's quickness of perception, he could not understand
such assertions on the part of the baroness; he thought that sorrow and
terror must have destroyed her reason.

"Ah! Madame," he exclaimed, "the baron had nothing to do with this
movement; far from it----"

He paused; all this was passing in the court-yard, in the glare of the
torches which had been lighted up by the servants. Anyone in the public
road could hear and see all. He realized the imprudence of which they
were guilty.

"Come, Madame," said he, leading the baroness toward the house; "and
you, also, Maurice, come!"

It was with the