berty, citizen, of sending you to--you understand me?
Enough. To the right-about, march! Let me alone, or it will be the worse
for you."

"But read that," persisted Corentin.

"Don't bother me with your functions," cried Hulot, furious at receiving
orders from a man he regarded as contemptible.

At this instant Galope-Chopine's boy suddenly appeared among them like a
rat from a hole.

"The Gars has started!" he cried.

"Which way?"

"The rue Saint-Leonard."

"Beau-Pied," said Hulot in a whisper to the corporal who was near him,
"go and tell your lieutenant to draw in closer round the house, and make
ready to fire. Left wheel, forward on the tower, the rest of you!" he
shouted.

To understand the conclusion of this fatal drama we must re-enter
the house with Mademoiselle de Verneuil when she returned to it after
denouncing the marquis to the commandant.

When passions reach their crisis they bring us under the dominion of far
greater intoxication than the petty excitements of wine or opium. The
lucidity then given to ideas, the delicacy of the high-wrought senses,
produce the most singular and unexpected effects. Some persons when
they find themselves under the tyranny of a single thought can see with
extraordinary distinctness objects scarcely visible to others, while at
the same time the most palpable things become to them almost as if they
did not exist. When Mademoiselle de Verneuil hurried, after reading
the marquis's letter, to prepare the way for vengeance just as she had
lately been preparing all for love, she was in that stage of mental
intoxication which makes real life like the life of a somnambulist. But
when she saw her house surrounded, by her own orders, with a triple line
of bayonets a sudden flash of light illuminated her soul. She judged her
conduct and saw with horror that she had committed a crime. Under the
first shock of this conviction she sprang to the threshold of the door
and stood there irresolute, striving to think, yet unable to follow out
her reasoning. She knew so vaguely what had happened that she tried in
vain to remember why she was in the antechamber, and why she was leading
a strange child by the hand. A million of stars were floating in the air
before her like tongues of fire. She began to walk about, striving to
shake off the horrible torpor which laid hold of her; but, like one
asleep, no object appeared to her under its natural form or in its
own colors. She grasped the