a courier was hastening toward Paris
with six petitions for pardons, signed by the Military Commission.

Chanlouineau was not among those for whom royal clemency had been
solicited.

When he left his cell, without knowing whether or not his letter had
availed, he counted the condemned with poignant anxiety.

His eyes betrayed such an agony of anguish that the priest who
accompanied him leaned toward him and whispered:

"For whom are you looking, my son?"

"For Baron d'Escorval."

"He escaped last night."

"Ah! now I shall die content!" exclaimed the heroic peasant.

He died as he had sworn he would die, without even changing color--calm
and proud, the name of Marie-Anne upon his lips.

CHAPTER XXXIII

Ah, well, there was one woman, a fair young girl, whose heart had not
been touched by the sorrowful scenes of which Montaignac had been the
theatre.

Mlle. Blanche de Courtornieu smiled as brightly as ever in the midst of
a stricken people; and surrounded by mourners, her lovely eyes remained
dry.

The daughter of a man who, for a week, exercised the power of a
dictator, she did not lift her finger to save a single one of the
condemned prisoners from the executioner.

They had stopped her carriage on the public road. This was a crime which
Mlle. de Courtornieu could never forget.

She also knew that she owed it to Marie-Anne's intercession that she had
not been held prisoner. This she could never forgive.

So it was with the bitterest resentment that, on the morning
following her arrival in Montaignac, she recounted what she styled her
"humiliations" to her father, i.e., the inconceivable arrogance of that
Lacheneur girl, and the frightful brutality of which the peasants had
been guilty.

And when the Marquis de Courtornieu asked if she would consent to
testify against Baron d'Escorval, she coldly replied:

"I think that such is my duty, and I shall fulfil it, however painful it
may be."

She knew perfectly well that her deposition would be the baron's
death-warrant; but she persisted in her resolve, veiling her hatred and
her insensibility under the name of virtue.

But we must do her the justice to admit that her testimony was sincere.

She really believed that it was Baron d'Escorval who was with the
rebels, and whose opinion Chanlouineau had asked.

This error on the part of Mlle. Blanche rose from the custom of
designating Maurice by his Christian name, which prevailed in the
neighborh