his secret thoughts, the private details
of his past life were not yet told, and it seemed as though he might die
at any moment. Time was passing, night already coming on, and it
occurred to the merciless questioner to profit by the gathering darkness.
By a few solemn words he aroused the religious feelings of the sufferer,
terrified him by speaking of the punishments of another life and the
flames of hell, until to the delirious fancy of the sick man he took the
form of a judge who could either deliver him to eternal damnation or open
the gates of heaven to him. At length, overwhelmed by a voice which
resounded in his ear like that of a minister of God, the dying man laid
bare his inmost soul before his tormentor, and made his last confession
to him.

Yet a few moments, and the executioner--he deserves no other name--hangs
over his victim, opens his tunic, seizes some papers and a few coins,
half draws his dagger, but thinks better of it; then, contemptuously
spurning the victim, as the other surgeon had done--

"I might kill you," he says, "but it would be a useless murder; it would
only be hastening your last Sigh by an hour or two, and advancing my
claims to your inheritance by the same space of time."

And he adds mockingly:--

"Farewell, my brother!"

The wounded soldier utters a feeble groan; the adventurer leaves the
room.

Four months later, a woman sat at the door of a house at one end of the
village of Artigues, near Rieux, and played with a child about nine or
ten years of age. Still young, she had the brown complexion of Southern
women, and her beautiful black hair fell in curls about her face. Her
flashing eyes occasionally betrayed hidden passions, concealed, however,
beneath an apparent indifference and lassitude, and her wasted form
seemed to acknowledge the existence of some secret grief. An observer
would have divined a shattered life, a withered happiness, a soul
grievously wounded.

Her dress was that of a wealthy peasant; and she wore one of the long
gowns with hanging sleeves which were in fashion in the sixteenth
century. The house in front of which she sat belonged to her, so also
the immense field which adjoined the garden. Her attention was divided
between the play of her son and the orders she was giving to an old
servant, when an exclamation from the child startled her.

"Mother!" he cried, "mother, there he is!"

She looked where the child pointed, and saw a young boy turn