entleman who had been observing
the flogging with disapproval, and who had followed her into the
courtyard.

"He is too brave a man to die like this, Bellecour," put in the
newcomer. "I doubt if he can survive the punishment he has already
received. Yet I would ask you, in the name of courage, to give him the
slender chance he may have."

"I promised him he should be flogged to death--" began the Marquis,
when Des Cadoux and Mademoiselle jointly interrupted him to renew their
intercessions.

"But, sangdieu," the Marquis protested "you seem to forget that he has
killed one of my servants."

"Why, then, you should have hanged him out of hand, not tortured him
thus," answered Des Cadoux shortly.

For a moment it almost seemed as if the pair of them would have fallen
a-quarrelling. Their words grew more heated, and then, while they were
still wrangling, the executioner came forward to solve matters with the
news that the secretary had expired. To Bellecour this proved a very
welcome conclusion.

"Most opportunely!" he laughed "Had the rascal lived another minute I
think we had quarrelled, Cadoux." He turned to the servant, "You are
certain that it is so?" he asked.

"Look, Monsieur," said the fellow, as he pointed with his whip to the
pilloried figure of La Boulaye. The Marquis looked, and saw that the
secretary had collapsed, and hung limp in his bonds, his head fallen
back upon his shoulders and his eyes closed.

With a shrug and a short laugh Bellecour turned to his daughter.

"You may take the carrion, if you want to. But I think you can do no
more than order it to be flung into a ditch and buried there."

But she had no mind to be advised by him. She had the young man's body
cut down from the pump, and she bade a couple of servants convey it to
the house of Master Duhamel, she for remembered that La Boulaye and the
old pedagogue were friends.

"An odd thing is a woman's heart," grumbled the Marquis, who begrudged
La Boulaye even his last act of mercy. "She may care never a fig for a
man, and yet, if he has but told her that he loves her, be he never
so mean and she never so exalted, he seems thereby to establish some
measure of claim to her."

CHAPTER IV. THE DISCIPLES OF ROUSSEAU

The Marquis of Bellecour would, perhaps have philosophised less
complacently had he known that the secretary was far from dead, and that
what the executioner had, genuinely enough, mistaken for death was no
more tha