ror! Let these nameless ghosts, these
silent spectres, lose themselves in the clear daylight which now appears,
and make room for other phantoms which rend their shrouds and issue from
the tomb demanding vengeance.

Derues was now soon to have a chance of obtaining immortality. Hitherto
his blows had been struck by chance, henceforth he uses all the resources
of his infernal imagination; he concentrates all his strength on one
point--conceives and executes his crowning piece of wickedness. He
employs for two years all his science as cheat, forger, and poisoner in
extending the net which was to entangle a whole family; and, taken in his
own snare, he struggles in vain; in vain does he seek to gnaw through the
meshes which confine him. The foot placed on the last rung of this
ladder of crime, stands also on the first step by which he mounts the
scaffold.

About a mile from Villeneuve-le-Roi-les-Sens, there stood in 1775 a
handsome house, overlooking the windings of the Yonne on one side, and on
the other a garden and park belonging to the estate of Buisson-Souef. It
was a large property, admirably situated, and containing productive
fields, wood, and water; but not everywhere kept in good order, and
showing something of the embarrassed fortune of its owner. During some
years the only repairs had been those necessary in the house itself and
its immediate vicinity. Here and there pieces of dilapidated wall
threatened to fall altogether, and enormous stems of ivy had invaded and
stifled vigorous trees; in the remoter portions of the park briers barred
the road and made walking almost impossible. This disorder was not
destitute of charm, and at an epoch when landscape gardening consisted
chiefly in straight alleys, and in giving to nature a cold and monotonous
symmetry, one's eye rested with pleasure on these neglected clumps, on
these waters which had taken a different course to that which art had
assigned to them, on these unexpected and picturesque scenes.

A wide terrace, overlooking the winding river, extended along the front
of the house. Three men were walking on it-two priests, and the owner of
Buisson-Souef, Monsieur de Saint-Faust de Lamotte. One priest was the
cure of Villeneuve-le-Roi-lez-Sens, the other was a Camaldulian monk, who
had come to see the cure about a clerical matter, and who was spending
some days at the presbytery. The conversation did not appear to be
lively. Every now and then Monsieu