ers' hands, and the corpse was flung into the
river. "Military honours!" shouted some one, and all who had guns fired
at the dead body, which was twice struck. "Tomb of Marshal Brune" was
then written on the arch, and the crowd withdrew, and passed the rest of
the day in holiday-making.

Meanwhile the Rhone, refusing to be an accomplice in such a crime, bore
away the corpse, which the assassins believed had been swallowed up for
ever. Next day it was found on the sandy shore at Tarascon, but the news
of the murder had preceded it, and it was recognised by the wounds, and
pushed back again into the waters, which bore it towards the sea.

Three leagues farther on it stopped again, this time by a grassy bank,
and was found by a man of forty and another of eighteen. They also
recognised it, but instead of shoving it back into the current, they
drew it up gently on the bank and carried it to a small property
belonging to one of them, where they reverently interred it. The elder
of the two was M. de Chartruse, the younger M. Amedee Pichot.

The body was exhumed by order of the marshal's widow, and brought to her
castle of Saint-Just, in Champagne; she had it embalmed, and placed in
a bedroom adjoining her own, where it remained, covered only by a veil,
until the memory of the deceased was cleansed from the accusation of
suicide by a solemn public trial and judgment. Then only it was finally
interred, along with the parchment containing the decision of the Court
of Riom.

The ruffians who killed Marshal Brune, although they evaded the justice
of men, did not escape the vengeance of God: nearly every one of them
came to a miserable end. Roquefort and Farges were attacked by strange
and hitherto unknown diseases, recalling the plagues sent by God on the
peoples whom He desired to punish in bygone ages. In the case of Farges,
his skin dried up and became horny, causing him such intense irritation,
that as the only means of allaying it he had to be kept buried up to
the neck while still alive. The disease under which Roquefort suffered
seemed to have its seat in the marrow, for his bones by degrees lost all
solidity and power of resistance, so that his limbs refused to bear his
weight, and he went about the streets crawling like a serpent. Both
died in such dreadful torture that they regretted having escaped the
scaffold, which would have spared them such prolonged agony.

Pointu was condemned to death, in his absence, at the