Corentin stationed himself before the fire, lifting the long pointed skirts of his coat to warm himself and assuming the air, manner, and tone of a gentleman who was paying a visit.

“Mesdames, you can go to bed, and the servants also.  Monsieur le maire, your services are no longer needed.  The sternness of our orders does not permit us to act otherwise than as we have done; but as soon as the walls, which seem to me rather thick, have been thoroughly examined, we shall take our departure.”

The mayor bowed to the company and retired; but neither the abbe nor Mademoiselle Goujet stirred.  The servants were too uneasy not to watch the fate of their young mistress.  Madame d’Hauteserre, who, from the moment of Laurence’s entrance, had studied her with the anxiety of a mother, rose, took her by the arm, led her aside, and said in a low voice, “Have you seen them?”

“Do you think I could have let your sons be under this roof without your knowing it?” replied Laurence.  “Durieu,” she added, “see if it is possible to save my poor Stella; she is still breathing.”

“She must have gone a great distance,” said Corentin.

“Forty miles in three hours,” she answered, addressing the abbe, who watched her with amazement.  “I started at half-past nine, and it was well past one when I returned.”

She looked at the clock which said half-past two.

“So you don’t deny that you have ridden forty miles?” said Corentin.

“No,” she said.  “I admit that my cousins, in their perfect innocence, expected not to be excluded from the amnesty, and were on their way to Cinq-Cygne.  When I found that the Sieur Malin was plotting to injure them, I went to warn them to return to Germany, where they will be before the telegraph can have guarded the frontier.  If I have done wrong I shall be punished for it.”

This answer, which Laurence had carefully considered, was so probable in all its parts that Corentin’s convictions were shaken.  In that decisive moment, when every soul present hung suspended, as it were, on the faces of the two adversaries, and all eyes turned from Corentin to Laurence and from Laurence to Corentin, again the gallop of a horse, coming from the forest, resounded on the road and from there through the gates to the paved courtyard.  Frightful anxiety was stamped on every face.

Peyrade entered, his eyes gleaming with joy.  He went hastily to Corentin and said, loud enough for the countess to hear him:  “We have caught Michu.”

Laurence, to whom the agony, fatigue, and tension of all her intellectual faculties had given an unusual color, turned white and fell back almost fainting on a chair.  Madame Durieu, Mademoiselle Goujet, and Madame d’Hauteserre sprang to help her, for she was suffocating.  She signed to cut the frogging of her habit.

“Duped!” said Corentin to Peyrade.  “I am certain now they are on their way to Paris.  Change the orders.”