This was the path which M. d’Escorval, faithful to his resolution, took the following day, in the hope of wresting from Marie-Anne’s father the secret of his inexplicable conduct.

He was so engrossed in his own thoughts that he failed to notice the overpowering heat as he climbed the rough hill-side in the full glare of the noonday sun.

When he reached the summit, however, he paused to take breath; and while wiping the perspiration from his brow, he turned to look back on the road which he had traversed.

It was the first time he had visited the spot, and he was surprised at the extent of the landscape which stretched before him.

From this point, which is the most elevated in the surrounding country, one can survey the entire valley of the Oiselle, and discern, in the distance, the redoubtable citadel of Montaignac, built upon an almost inaccessible rock.

This last circumstance, which the baron was afterward doomed to recall in the midst of the most terrible scenes, did not strike him then.  Lacheneur’s house absorbed all his attention.

His imagination pictured vividly the sufferings of this unfortunate man, who, only two days before, had relinquished the splendors of the Chateau de Sairmeuse to repair to this wretched abode.

He rapped at the door of the cottage.

“Come in!” said a voice.

The baron lifted the latch and entered.

The room was small, with un-white-washed walls, but with no other floor than the ground; no ceiling save the thatch that formed the roof.

A bed, a table and two wooden benches constituted the entire furniture.

Seated upon a stool, near the tiny window, sat Marie-Anne, busily at work upon a piece of embroidery.

She had abandoned her former mode of dress, and her costume was that worn by the peasant girls.

When M. d’Escorval entered she rose, and for a moment they remained silently standing, face to face, she apparently calm, he visibly agitated.

He was looking at Marie-Anne; and she seemed to him transfigured.  She was much paler and considerably thinner; but her beauty had a strange and touching charm—­the sublime radiance of heroic resignation and of duty nobly fulfilled.

Still, remembering his son, he was astonished to see this tranquillity.

“You do not ask me for news of Maurice,” he said, reproachfully.

“I had news of him this morning, Monsieur, as I have had every day.  I know that he is improving; and that, since day before yesterday, he has been allowed to take a little nourishment.”

“You have not forgotten him, then?”

She trembled; a faint blush suffused throat and forehead, but it was in a calm voice that she replied: 

“Maurice knows that it would be impossible for me to forget him, even if I wished to do so.”

“And yet you have told him that you approve your father’s decision!”