'"

And the axe might fall at any moment. A word, a trifle, an unlucky
chance--she dared not say "a decree of Providence," and Martial would
know all.

Such, in all its unspeakable horror, was the position of the beautiful
and envied Duchesse de Sairmeuse. "She must be perfectly happy," said
the world; but she felt herself sliding down the precipice to the awful
depths below.

Like a shipwrecked mariner clinging to a floating spar, she scanned
the horizon with a despairing eye, and saw only angry and threatening
clouds.

Time, perhaps, might bring her some relief.

Once it happened that six weeks went by, and she heard nothing from
Chupin. A month and a half! What had become of him? To Mme. Blanche this
silence was as ominous as the calm that precedes the storm.

A line in a newspaper solved the mystery.

Chupin was in prison.

The wretch, after drinking more heavily than usual one evening, had
quarrelled with his brother, and had killed him by a blow upon the head
with a piece of iron.

The blood of the betrayed Lacheneur was visited upon the heads of his
murderer's children.

Tried by the Court of Assizes, Chupin was condemned to twenty years of
hard labor, and sent to Brest.

But this sentence afforded the duchess no relief. The culprit had
written to her from his Paris prison; he wrote to her from Brest.

But he did not send his letters through the post. He confided them to
comrades, whose terms of imprisonment had expired, and who came to the
Hotel de Sairmeuse demanding an interview with the duchess.

And she received them. They told all the miseries they had endured "out
there;" and usually ended by requesting some slight assistance.

One morning, a man whose desperate appearance and manner frightened her,
brought the duchess this laconic epistle:

"I am tired of starving here; I wish to make my escape. Come to Brest;
you can visit the prison, and we will decide upon some plan. If you
refuse to do this, I shall apply to the duke, who will obtain my pardon
in exchange of what I will tell him."

Mme. Blanche was dumb with horror. It was impossible, she thought, to
sink lower than this.

"Well!" demanded the man, harshly. "What reply shall I make to my
comrade?"

"I will go--tell him that I will go!" she said, driven to desperation.

She made the journey, visited the prison, but did not find Chupin.

The previous week there had been a revolt in the prison, the troops had
fired upon the