At last, at the end of the corridor, he heard the rustling of a dress against the wall.

“It is she,” he murmured.

Footsteps approached; the heavy bolts were drawn back, the door opened, and Marie-Anne entered, accompanied by Corporal Bavois.

“Monsieur de Courtornieu promised me that we should be left alone!” exclaimed Chanlouineau.

“Therefore, I go at once,” replied the old soldier.  “But I have orders to return for mademoiselle in half an hour.”

When the door closed behind the worthy corporal, Chanlouineau took Marie-Anne’s hand and drew her to the tiny grafted window.

“Thank you for coming,” said he, “thank you.  I can see you and speak to you once more.  Now that my hours are numbered, I may reveal the secret of my soul and of my life.  Now, I can venture to tell you how ardently I have loved you—­how much I still love you.”

Involuntarily Marie-Anne drew away her hand and stepped back.

This outburst of passion, at such a moment, seemed at once unspeakably sad and frightful.

“Have I, then, offended you?” said Chanlouineau, sadly.  “Forgive one who is about to die!  You cannot refuse to listen to the voice of one, who after tomorrow, will have vanished from earth forever.

“I have loved you for a long time, Marie-Anne, for more than six years.  Before I saw you, I loved only my possessions.  To raise fine crops, and to amass a fortune, seemed to me, then, the greatest possible happiness here below.

“Why did I meet you?  But at that time you were so high, and I, so low, that never in my wildest dreams did I aspire to you.  I went to church each Sunday only that I might worship you as peasant women worship the Blessed Virgin; I went home with my eyes and my heart full of you—­and that was all.

“Then came the misfortune that brought us nearer to each other; and your father made me as insane, yes, as insane as himself.

“After the insults he received from the Sairmeuse, your father resolved to revenge himself upon these arrogant nobles, and he selected me for his accomplice.  He had read my heart.  On leaving the house of Baron d’Escorval, on that Sunday evening, which you must remember, the compact that bound me to your father was made.

“‘You love my daughter, my boy,’ said he.  ’Very well, aid me, and I promise you, in case we succeed, she shall be your wife.  Only,’ he added, ‘I must warn you that you hazard your life.’

“But what was life in comparison with the hope that dazzled me!  From that night I gave body, soul, and fortune to the cause.  Others were influenced by hatred, or by ambition; but I was actuated by neither of these motives.

“What did the quarrels of the great matter to me—­a simple laborer?  I knew that the greatest were powerless to give my crops a drop of rain in season of drought, or a ray of sunshine during the rain.

“I took part in this conspiracy because I loved you——­”