atal trowels clanged and jarred
around him, he spake not--stirred not--gave no sign.

Even the savage wretch, de Ploermel, unable to believe in the
existence of such chivalry, such honor, half doubted if he were not
deceived, and the cupboard were not untenanted by the true victim.

Higher and higher rose the wall before the oaken door; and by the
exclusion of the light of the many torches by which the men were
working, the victim must have marked, inch by inch, the progress of
his living immersement. The page, Jules, had climbed in silence to the
window's ledge, and was looking in, an unseen spectator, for he had
heard all that passed from without, and suspected his lord's presence
in the fatal precinct.

But as he saw the wall rise higher--higher--as he saw the last brick
fastened in its place solid, immovable from within, and that without
strife or opposition, he doubted not but that there was some concealed
exit by which St. Renan had escaped, and he descended hastily and
hurried homeward.

Now came the lady's trial--the trial that shall prove to de Ploermel
whether his vengeance was complete. She was led in with Rose, a
prisoner. _Lettres de cachet_ had been obtained, when the treason of
some wretched subordinate had revealed the secret of her intended
flight with Raoul; and the officers had seized the wife by the
connivance of the shameless husband.

"See!" he said, as she entered, "see, the fool suffered himself to be
walled up there in silence. There let him die in agony. You, madam,
may live as long as you please in the Bastille, _au secret_."

She saw that all was lost--her lover's sacrifice was made--she could
not save him! Should she, by a weak divulging of the truth, render his
grand devotion fruitless? Never!

Her pale cheek did not turn one shade the paler, but her keen eye
flashed living fire, and her beautiful lip writhed with loathing and
scorn irrepressible.

"It is thou who art the fool!" she said, "who hast made all this coil,
to wall up a poor cat in a cupboard, as it is thou who art the base
knave and shameless pandar, who hast attempted to do murther, and all
to sell thine own wife to a corrupt and loathsome tyrant!"

All stood aghast at her fierce words, uttered with all the eloquence
and vehemence of real passion, but none so much as Rose, who had never
beheld her other than the gentlest of the gentle. Now she wore the
expression, and spoke with the tone of a young Pythoness, full of