her view the body of the
captain stretched on the floor, and swimming in a sea of blood.

At this sight, so widely different from what she expected, Bathilde, not
thinking that she might perhaps be compromising her lover, sprang toward
the door, calling for help, but on reaching the threshold, either from
weakness, or from the blood, her foot slipped, and she fell backward
with a terrible cry.

The neighbors came running in the direction of the cry, and found that
Bathilde had fainted, and that her head, in falling against the angle of
the door, had been badly wounded.

They carried Bathilde to Madame Denis's room, and the good woman
hastened to offer her hospitality.

As to Captain Roquefinette, as he had torn off the address of the letter
which he had in his pocket to light his pipe with, and had no other
paper to indicate his name or residence, they carried his body to the
Morgue, where, three days afterward, it was recognized by La Normande.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

GOD DISPOSES.

D'Harmental, as we have seen, had set off at a gallop, feeling that he
had not an instant to lose in bringing about the changes which the
death of Captain Roquefinette rendered necessary in his hazardous
enterprise. In the hope of recognizing by some sign the individuals who
were destined to play the part of supernumeraries in this great drama,
he followed the boulevards as far as the Porte Saint Martin, and having
arrived there, turned to the left, and was in the midst of the horse
market: it was there, it will be remembered, that the twelve or fifteen
sham peasants enlisted by Roquefinette waited the orders of their
captain. But, as the deceased had said, no sign pointed out to the eye
of the stranger who were the men, clothed like the rest, and scarcely
known to each other. D'Harmental, therefore, sought vainly; all the
faces were unknown to him; buyers and sellers appeared equally
indifferent to everything except the bargains which they were
concluding. Twice or thrice, after having approached persons whom he
fancied he recognized as false bargainers, he went away without even
speaking to them, so great was the probability, that, among the five or
six hundred individuals who were on the ground, the chevalier would make
some mistake which might be not only useless, but even dangerous.

The situation was pitiable: D'Harmental unquestionably had there, ready
to his hand, all the means necessary to the happy completion of his
p