“If you take that tone the matter is likely to go far,” replied the lieutenant.

“Dear cousin,” said the Marquis de Simeuse, “we are forced to go to prison; but do not be uneasy; we shall return in a few hours, for there is some misunderstanding in all this which can be explained.”

“I hope so, for your sakes, gentlemen,” said the magistrate, signing to the gendarmes to remove the four gentlemen, Michu, and Gothard.  “Don’t take them to Troyes; keep them in your guardhouse at Arcis,” he said to the lieutenant; “they must be present to-morrow, at daybreak, when we compare the shoes of their horses with the hoof-prints in the park.”

Lechesneau and Pigoult did not follow until they had closely questioned Catherine, Monsieur and Madame d’Hauteserre, and Laurence.  The Durieus, Catherine, and Marthe declared they had only seen their masters at breakfast-time; Monsieur d’Hauteserre said he had seen them at three o’clock.

When, at midnight, Laurence found herself alone with Monsieur and Madame d’Hauteserre, the abbe and his sister, and without the four young men who for the last eighteen months had been the life of the chateau and the love and joy of her own life, she fell into a gloomy silence which no one present dared to break.  No affliction was ever deeper or more complete than hers.  At last a deep sigh broke the stillness, and all eyes turned towards the sound.

Marthe, forgotten in a corner, rose, exclaiming, “Death!  They will kill them in spite of their innocence!”

“Mademoiselle, what is the matter with you?” said the abbe.

Laurence left the room without replying.  She needed solitude to recover strength in presence of this terrible unforeseen disaster.

CHAPTER XV

DOUBTS AND FEARS OF COUNSEL

At a distance of thirty-four years, during which three great revolutions have taken place, none but elderly persons can recall the immense excitement produced in Europe by the abduction of a senator of the French Empire.  No trial, if we except that of Trumeaux, the grocer of the Place Saint-Michel, and that of the widow Morin, under the Empire; those of Fualdes and de Castaing, under the Restoration; those of Madame Lafarge and Fieschi, under the present government, ever roused so much curiosity or so deep an interest as that of the four young men accused of abducting Malin.  Such an attack against a member of his Senate excited the wrath of the Emperor, who was told of the arrest of the delinquents almost at the moment when he first heard of the crime and the negative results of the inquiries.  The forest, searched throughout, the department of the Aube, ransacked from end to end, gave not the slightest indication of the passage of the Comte de Gondreville nor of his imprisonment.  Napoleon sent for the chief justice, who, after obtaining certain information from the ministry of police, explained to his Majesty the position of Malin in regard to the Simeuse brothers and the Gondreville estate.  The Emperor, at that time pre-occupied with serious matters, considered the affair explained by these anterior facts.