betrays my betrayal; he must die
convinced of my fidelity. I ask that of you. Let him know only me--me,
and my caresses!"

She stopped; but through the crimson of her cheeks Hulot and Corentin
saw that rage and delirium had not entirely smothered all sense of
shame. Marie shuddered violently as she said the words; she seemed to
listen to them as though she doubted whether she herself had said them,
and she made the involuntary movement of a woman whose veil is falling
from her.

"But you had him in your power," said Corentin.

"Very likely."

"Why did you stop me when I had him?" asked Hulot.

"I did not know what he would prove to be," she cried. Then, suddenly,
the excited woman, who was walking up and down with hurried steps and
casting savage glances at the spectators of the storm, calmed down. "I
do not know myself," she said, in a man's tone. "Why talk? I must go and
find him."

"Go and find him?" said Hulot. "My dear woman, take care; we are not yet
masters of this part of the country; if you venture outside of the town
you will be taken or killed before you've gone a hundred yards."

"There's never any danger for those who seek vengeance," she said,
driving from her presence with a disdainful gesture the two men whom she
was ashamed to face.

"What a woman!" cried Hulot as he walked away with Corentin. "A queer
idea of those police fellows in Paris to send her here; but she'll never
deliver him up to us," he added, shaking his head.

"Oh yes, she will," replied Corentin.

"Don't you see she loves him?" said Hulot.

"That's just why she will. Besides," looking at the amazed commandant,
"I am here to see that she doesn't commit any folly. In my opinion,
comrade, there is no love in the world worth the three hundred thousand
francs she'll make out of this."

When the police diplomatist left the soldier the latter stood looking
after him, and as the sound of the man's steps died away he gave a sigh,
muttering to himself, "It may be a good thing after all to be such a
dullard as I am. God's thunder! if I meet the Gars I'll fight him hand
to hand, or my name's not Hulot; for if that fox brings him before me in
any of their new-fangled councils of war, my honor will be as soiled as
the shirt of a young trooper who is under fire for the first time."

The massacre at La Vivetiere, and the desire to avenge his friends had
led Hulot to accept a reinstatement in his late command; in fact, the
new minister,