hose that
still preserve, in their outward appearance at least, some of the more
familiar traces of humanity. The first had its usual complement of
dissevered and confounded fragments, in which the remains of young and
old, of the two sexes, the fierce and the meek, the penitent and the
sinner, lay in indiscriminate confusion--an eloquent reproach to the pride
of man; while the walls of the last supported some twenty blackened and
shrivelled effigies of the race, to show to what a pass of disgusting and
frightful deformity the human form can be reduced, when deprived of that
noble principle which likens it to its Divine Creator. On a table, in the
centre of a group of black and grinning companions in misfortune, sat all
that was left of Jacques Colis, who had been removed from the bone-house
below to this at the convent for purposes connected with the coming
investigation. The body was accidentally placed in such an attitude that
the face was brought within the line of the parting light, while it had no
other covering than the clothes worn by the murdered man in life.
Sigismund gazed long at the pallid lineaments. They were still distorted
with the agony produced by separating the soul from the body. All feeling
of resentment for his sister's wrongs was lost in pity for the fate that
had so suddenly overtaken one, in whom the passions, the interests, and
the complicated machinery of this state of being, were so actively at
work. Then came the bitter apprehension that his own father, in a moment
of ungovernable anger, excited by the accumulated wrongs that bore so hard
on him and his, might really have been the instrument of effecting the
fearful and sudden change. Sickening with the thought, the young man
turned and walked away towards the brow of the declivity. Voices,
ascending to his ear, recalled him to the actual situation of things.

A train of mules were climbing the last acclivity where the path takes the
broken precipitous appearance of a flight of steps. The light was still
sufficient to distinguish the forms and general appearance of the
travellers. Sigismund immediately recognized them to be the bailiff of
Vevey and his attendants, for whose arrival the formal proceedings of the
examination had alone been stayed.

"A fair evening, Herr Sigismund, and a happy meeting," cried Peterchen, so
soon as his weary mule, which frequently halted under its unwieldy
burthen, had brought him within hearing. "Little did I