La
Pelerine. I think, moreover, that your head will fill with lead before
mine. What say you?"

Montauran felt a horrible necessity to vent his rage. His bitter
sarcasm, the ferocity, even the treachery of this military execution,
done without his orders, but which he now accepted, satisfied in
some degree the craving of his heart. In his fury he would fain have
annihilated France. The dead Blues, the living officers, all innocent
of the crime for which he demanded vengeance, were to him the cards by
which a gambler cheats his despair.

"I would rather perish than conquer as you are conquering," said Gerard.
Then, seeing the naked and bloody corpses of his men, he cried out,
"Murdered basely, in cold blood!"

"That was how you murdered Louis XVI., monsieur," said the marquis.

"Monsieur," replied Gerard, haughtily, "there are mysteries in a king's
trial which you could never comprehend."

"Do you dare to accuse the king?" exclaimed the marquis.

"Do you dare to fight your country?" retorted Gerard.

"Folly!" said the marquis.

"Parricide!" exclaimed the Republican.

"Well, well," cried Merle, gaily, "a pretty time to quarrel at the
moment of your death."

"True," said Gerard, coldly, turning to the marquis. "Monsieur, if it is
your intention to put us to death, at least have the goodness to shoot
us at once."

"Ah! that's like you, Gerard," said Merle, "always in a hurry to finish
things. But if one has to travel far and can't breakfast on the morrow,
at least we might sup."

Gerard sprang forward without a word towards the wall. Pille-Miche
covered him, glancing as he did so at the motionless marquis, whose
silence he took for an order, and the adjutant-major fell like a tree.
Marche-a-Terre ran to share the fresh booty with Pille-Miche; like two
hungry crows they disputed and clamored over the still warm body.

"If you really wish to finish your supper, captain, you can come with
me," said the marquis to Merle.

The captain followed him mechanically, saying in a low voice: "It is
that devil of a strumpet that caused all this. What will Hulot say?"

"Strumpet!" cried the marquis in a strangled voice, "then she is one?"

The captain seemed to have given Montauran a death-blow, for he
re-entered the house with a staggering step, pale, haggard, and undone.

Another scene had meanwhile taken place in the dining-room, which
assumed, in the marquis's absence, such a threatening character that
Marie, alo