s' quarters."

The servants' quarters--but where are the servants?

Madame's answers are witty but evasive. "Never mind them now--save the
valuables!"

Somebody touches Judge Canonge--"Those servants are chained and locked up
and liable to perish."

"Where?"

"In the garret rooms."

He hurries towards them, but fails to reach them, and returns, driven back
and nearly suffocated by the smoke. He looks around him--this is no sketch
of the fancy; we have his deposition sworn before a magistrate next
day--and sees some friends of the family. He speaks to them:

"I am told"--so and so--"can it be? Will you speak to Monsieur or to
Madame?" But the friends repulse him coldly.

He turns and makes fresh inquiries of others. He notices two gentlemen
near him whom he knows. One is Montreuil. "Here, Montreuil, and you,
Fernandez, will you go to the garret and search? I am blind and half
smothered." Another--he thinks it was Felix Lefebre--goes in another
direction, most likely towards the double door between the attics of the
house and wing. Montreuil and Fernandez come back saying they have
searched thoroughly and found nothing. Madame Lalaurie begs them, with all
her sweetness, to come other ways and consider other things. But here is
Lefebre. He cries, "I have found some of them! I have broken some bars,
but the doors are locked!"

Judge Canonge hastens through the smoke. They reach the spot.

"Break the doors down!" Down come the doors. The room they push into is a
"den." They bring out two negresses. One has a large heavy iron collar at
the neck and heavy irons on her feet. The fire is subdued now, they say,
but the search goes on. Here is M. Guillotte; he has found another victim
in another room. They push aside a mosquito-net and see a negro woman,
aged, helpless, and with a deep wound in the head.

Some of the young men lift her and carry her out.

Judge Canonge confronts Doctor Lalaurie again:

"Are there slaves still in your garret, Monsieur?" And the doctor "replies
with insulting tone that 'There are persons who would do much better by
remaining at home than visiting others to dictate to them laws in the
quality of officious friends.'"

The search went on. The victims were led or carried out. The sight that
met the public eye made the crowd literally groan with horror and shout
with indignation. "We saw," wrote the editor of the "Advertiser" next day,
"one of these miserable beings. The sight was so hor