‘No, for there was many a little corpse among those we buried,’ said the fisher.  ‘Will the gentleman see the place?’

‘Oh, no!’ exclaimed Philip, understanding the actions, and indeed many of the words; ‘this place will kill him.’

‘To the grave,’ said Berenger, as if he heard nothing.

‘See,’ added Philip, ‘there are better things than graves,’ and he pointed to a young green sucker of a vine, which, stimulated by the burnt soil, had shot up between the tiles of the floor.  ’Look, there is hope to meet you even here.’

Berenger merely answered by gathering a leaf from the vine and putting it into his bosom; and Philip, whom only extreme need could have thus inspired, perceived that he accepted it as the augury of hope.

Berenger turned to bid the two men bear the cradle with them, and then followed the old man out into the PLACE, once a pleasant open paved square, now grass-grown and forlorn.  On one side lay the remains of the church.  The Huguenots had been so predominant at La Sablerie as to have engrossed the building, and it had therefore shared the general destruction, and lay in utter, desolate ruin, a mere shell, and the once noble spire, the mariner’s guiding star, blown up with gun-cruel that ever desolated the country.  Beyond lay the burial-ground, in unspeakable dreariness.  The crossed of the Catholic dead had been levelled by the fanaticism of the Huguenots, and though a great dominant stone cross raised on steps had been re-erected, it stood uneven, tottering and desolate among nettles, weeds, and briers.  There seemed to have been a few deep trenches dug to receive the bodies of the many victims of the siege, and only rudely and slightly filled in with loose earth, on which Philippe treading had nearly sunk in, so much to his horror that he could hardly endure the long contemplation in which his brother stood gazing on the dismal scene, as if to bear it away with him.  Did the fair being he had left in a king’s palace sleep her last sleep her last sleep amid the tangled grass, the thistles and briers that grew so close that it was hardly possible to keep from stumbling over them, where all memorials of friend or foe were alike obliterated?  Was a resting-place among these nameless graves the best he could hope for the wife whose eyes he had hoped by this time would be answering his own—­was this her shelter from foe, from sword, famine, and fire?

A great sea-bird, swooping along with broad wings and wild wailing cry, completed the weird dismay that had seized on Philip, and clutching at his brother’s cloak, he exclaimed, ’Berry, Berry, let us be gone, or we shall both be distraught!’

Berenger yielded passively, but when the ruins of the town had been again crossed, and the sad little party, after amply rewarding the old man, were about to return to St. Julien, he stood still, saying, ‘Which is the way to Nissard?’ and, as the men pointed to the south, he added, ‘Show me the way thither.’