n had accused him I would have defended him; if the
universe rejected him my soul should have been his refuge. In the old
days life was filled with human beings coming and going for whom I did
not care; it was sad and dull, but not horrible; but now, now, what is
life without him? He will live on, and I not near him! I shall not see
him, speak to him, feel him, hold him, press him,--ha! I would rather
strangle him myself in his sleep!"

Francine, horrified, looked at her in silence.

"Kill the man you love?" she said, in a soft voice.

"Yes, yes, if he ceases to love me."

But after those ruthless words she hid her face in her hands, and sat
down silently.

The next day a man presented himself without being announced. His face
was stern. It was Hulot, followed by Corentin. Mademoiselle de Verneuil
looked at the commandant and trembled.

"You have come," she said, "to ask me to account for your friends. They
are dead."

"I know it," he replied, "and not in the service of the Republic."

"For me, and by me," she said. "You preach the nation to me. Can the
nation bring to life those who die for her? Can she even avenge
them? But I--I will avenge them!" she cried. The awful images of the
catastrophe filled her imagination suddenly, and the graceful creature
who held modesty to be the first of women's wiles forgot herself in a
moment of madness, and marched towards the amazed commandant brusquely.

"In exchange for a few murdered soldiers," she said, "I will bring to
the block a head that is worth a million heads of other men. It is not a
woman's business to wage war; but you, old as you are, shall learn good
stratagems from me. I'll deliver a whole family to your bayonets--him,
his ancestors, his past, his future. I will be as false and treacherous
to him as I was good and true. Yes, commandant, I will bring that little
noble to my arms, and he shall leave them to go to death. I have no
other rival. The wretch himself pronounced his doom,--_a day without a
morrow_. Your Republic and I shall be avenged. The Republic!" she cried
in a voice the strange intonations of which horrified Hulot. "Is he to
die for bearing arms against the nation? Shall I suffer France to rob me
of my vengeance? Ah! what a little thing is life! death can expiate but
one crime. He has but one head to fall, but I will make him know in one
night that he loses more than life. Commandant, you who will kill him,"
and she sighed, "see that nothing