[Footnote 11:  Written before universal service was obligatory, and when soldiers were selected by conscription, a certain amount of those who drew high numbers, being exempt from service.—­TRANSLATOR.]

Tiennou prowled about the house, like a starving beggar, and one morning, while the miller was mending the wheel, he managed to see Margot.

“I will wait for you in the old place to-night,” he whispered, in terrible grief.  “I know it is the last time ...  I shall throw myself into some deep hole in the river if you do not come! ...”

“I will be there, Tiennou,” she replied, in a bewildered manner.  “I swear I will be there ... even if I have to do something terrible to enable me to come!”

* * * * *

The village was burning in the dark night, and the flames, fanned by the wind, rose up like sinister torches.  The thatched roofs, the ricks of corn, the haystacks, and the barns fell in, and crackled like rockets, while the sky looked as if they were illuminated by an aurora borealis.  Fresquyl’s mill was smoking, and its calcined ruins were reflected on the deep water.  The sheep and cows were running about the fields in terror, the dogs were howling, and the women were sitting on the broken furniture, and were crying and wringing their hands; while during all this time Margot was abandoning herself to her lover’s ardent caresses, and with her arms round his neck, she said to him, tenderly: 

“You see that I have kept my promise ...  I set fire to the mill so that I might be able to get out.  So much the worse if all have suffered.  But I do not care as long as you are happy in having me, and love me!”

And pointing to the fire which was still burning fiercely in the distance, she added with a burst of savage laughter: 

“Tiennou, we shall not have such beautiful tapers at out wedding Mass when you come back from your regiment!”

And thus it was that for the second time Margot Fresquyl yielded to the mortal sin of love.

CAUGHT IN THE VERY ACT

“It is certain,” Sulpice de Laurier said, “that I had absolutely forgotten the date on which I was to allow myself to be taken in the very act, with a mistress for the occasion.  As neither my wife nor I had any serious nor plausible reason for a divorce, not even the slightest incompatibility of temper, and as there is always a risk of not softening the heart of even the most indulgent judge when he is told that the parties have agreed to drag their load separately, each for themselves, that they are too frisky, too fond of pleasure and of wandering about from place to place to continue the conjugal experiment, we between us got up the ingenious stage arrangement of, ’a serious wrong...’