ss the grandfather and the grandmother
of the criminal. Their glazed and reddened eyes seemed to weep blood,
their arms trembled so that the sticks on which they leaned tapped
lightly on the pavement. Next, the father and the mother, their faces in
their handkerchiefs, sobbed aloud. Around these four heads of the family
knelt the two married sisters accompanied by their husbands, and three
sons, stupefied with grief. Five little children on their knees, the
oldest not seven years old, unable, no doubt, to understand what
was happening, gazed and listened with the torpid curiosity that
characterizes the peasantry, and is really the observation of physical
things pushed to its highest limit. Lastly, the poor unmarried sister,
imprisoned in the interests of justice, now released, a martyr to
fraternal affection, Denise Tascheron, was listening to the priest's
words with a look that was partly bewildered and partly incredulous.
For her, her brother could not die. She well represented that one of the
Three Marys who did not believe in the death of Christ, though she was
present at the last agony. Pale, with dry eyes, like all those who have
gone without sleep, her fresh complexion was already faded, less by
toil and field labor than by grief; nevertheless, she had many of the
beauties of a country maiden,--a plump, full figure, finely shaped
arms, rounded cheeks, and clear, pure eyes, lighted at this instant with
flashes of despair. Below the throat, a firm, fair skin, not tanned by
the sun, betrayed the presence of a white and rosy flesh where the form
was hidden.

The married daughters wept; their husbands, patient farmers, were grave
and serious. The three brothers, profoundly sad, did not raise their
eyes from the ground. In the midst of this dreadful picture of dumb
despair and desolation, Denise and her mother alone showed symptoms of
revolt.

The other inhabitants of the village united in the affliction of this
respectable family with a sincere and Christian pity which gave the same
expression to the faces of all,--an expression amounting to horror when
the rector's words announced that the knife was then falling on the neck
of a young man whom they all knew well from his very birth, and whom
they had doubtless thought incapable of crime.

The sobs which interrupted the short and simple allocution which the
pastor made to his flock overcame him so much that he stopped and said
no more, except to invite all present