“Who is it, Brigitte?” the prosecutor asked kindly, as if he too were in the secret of the household.

“A conscript that the mayor has sent here for a night’s lodging,” the woman replied, holding out the billet.

“So it is,” said the prosecutor, when he had read the slip of paper.  “A battalion is coming here to-night.”

And he went.

The Countess’s need to believe in the faith of her sometime attorney was so great, that she dared not entertain any suspicion of him.  She fled upstairs; she felt scarcely strength enough to stand; she opened the door, and sprang, half dead with fear, into her son’s arms.

“Oh! my child! my child!” she sobbed, covering him with almost frenzied kisses.

“Madame!...” said a stranger’s voice.

“Oh! it is not he!” she cried, shrinking away in terror, and she stood face to face with the conscript, gazing at him with haggard eyes.

“O saint bon Dieu! how like he is!” cried Brigitte.

There was silence for a moment; even the stranger trembled at the sight of Mme. de Dey’s face.

“Ah! monsieur,” she said, leaning on the arm of Brigitte’s husband, feeling for the first time the full extent of a sorrow that had all but killed her at its first threatening; “ah! monsieur, I cannot stay to see you any longer ... permit my servants to supply my place, and to see that you have all that you want.”

She went down to her own room, Brigitte and the old serving-man half carrying her between them.  The housekeeper set her mistress in a chair, and broke out: 

“What, madame! is that man to sleep in Monsieur Auguste’s bed, and wear Monsieur Auguste’s slippers, and eat the pasty that I made for Monsieur Auguste?  Why, if they were to guillotine me for it, I—­”

“Brigitte!” cried Mme. de Dey.

Brigitte said no more.

“Hold your tongue, chatterbox,” said her husband, in a low voice; “do you want to kill madame?”

A sound came from the conscript’s room as he drew his chair to the table.

“I shall not stay here,” cried Mme. de Dey; “I shall go into the conservatory; I shall hear better there if anyone passes in the night.”

She still wavered between the fear that she had lost her son and the hope of seeing him once more.  That night was hideously silent.  Once, for the Countess, there was an awful interval, when the battalion of conscripts entered the town, and the men went by, one by one, to their lodgings.  Every footfall, every sound in the street, raised hopes to be disappointed; but it was not for long, the dreadful quiet succeeded again.  Toward morning the Countess was forced to return to her room.  Brigitte, ever keeping watch over her mistress’s movements, did not see her come out again; and when she went, she found the Countess lying there dead.

“I expect she heard that conscript,” cried Brigitte, “walking about Monsieur Auguste’s room, whistling that accursed Marseillaise of theirs while he dressed, as if he had been in a stable!  That must have killed her.”