‘Alas! what hope could we have but in praying?’ said Elisabeth, with tears in her eyes.  ’Little one, we will be joined at least in our prayers and intercessions:  thou wilt not forget in thine one who yet lives, unhappier than all!’

’And, oh, my good, my holy Queen, will you indeed pray for him—­my husband?  He was so good, his faith can surely not long be reckoned against him.  He did not believe in Purgatory!  Perhaps——­’ Then frowning with a difficulty far beyond a fever-clouded brain, she concluded—­’At least, orisons may aid him!  It is doing something for him!  Oh, where are my beads?—­I can begin at once.’

The Queen put her arm round her, and together they said the De profundis,—­the Queen understood every word far more for the living than the dead.  Again Elisabeth had given new life to Eustacie.  The intercession for her husband was something to live for, and the severest convent was coveted, until she was assured that she would not be allowed to enter on any rule till she had time to recover her health, and show the constancy of her purpose by a residence at Bellaise.

Ere parting, however, the Queen bent over her, and colouring, as if much ashamed of what she said, whispered—­’Child, not a word of the ceremony at Montpipeau!—­you understand?  The King was always averse; it would bring him and me into dreadful trouble with THOSE OTHERS, and alas!  It makes no difference now.  You will be silent?’

And Eustacie signed her acquiescence, as indeed no difficulty was made in her being regarded as the widow of the Baron de Ribaumont, when she further insisted on procuring a widow’s dress before she quitted her room, and declared, with much dignity, that she should esteem no person her friend who called her Mademoiselle de Nid-de-Merle.  To this the Chevalier de Ribaumont was willing to give way; he did not care whether Narcisse married her as Berenger’s widow or as the separated maiden wife, and he thought her vehement opposition and dislike would die away the faster the fewer impediments were placed in her way.  Both he and Diane strongly discouraged any attempt on Narcisse’s widow part at a farewell interview; and thus unmolested, and under the constant soothing influence of reciting her prayers, in the trust that they were availing her husband, Eustacie rallied so much that about ten day after the dreadful St. Batholomew, in the early morning, she was half-led half-carried down the stairs between her uncle and Veronique.  Her face was close muffled in her thick black veil, but when she came to the foot of the first stairs where she had found Berenger’s cap, a terrible shuddering came on her; she again murmured something about the smell of blood, and fell into a swoon.

‘Carry her on at once,’ said Diane, who was following,—­’there will be not end to it if you do not remove her immediately.’

And thus shielded from the sight of Marcisse’s intended passionate gesture of farewell at the palace-door, Eustecie was laid at full length on the seat of the great ponderous family coach, where Veronique hardly wished to revive her till the eight horses should have dragged her beyond the streets of Paris, with their terrible associations, and the gibbets still hung with the limbs of the murdered.