door. At this moment, Hardy, in the height of his frenzy, exclaimed,
with a supplicating voice: "A cell--a tomb--and the Ecstatic Vision!"

The door of the room opened, and Father d'Aigrigny entered, with a cloak
under his arm. A servant followed him, bearing a light.

About ten minutes after this scene, a dozen robust men with frank, open
countenances, led by Agricola, entered the Rue de Vaugirard, and advanced
joyously towards the house of the reverend fathers. It was a deputation
from the former workmen of M. Hardy. They came to escort him, and to
congratulate him on his return amongst them. Agricola walked at their
head. Suddenly he saw a carriage with post-horses issuing from the
gateway of the house. The postilion whipped up the horses, and they
started at full gallop. Was it chance or instinct? The nearer the
carriage approached the group of which he formed a part, the more did
Agricola's heart sink within him.

The impression became so vivid that it was soon changed into a terrible
apprehension; and at the moment when the vehicle, which had its blinds
down, was about to pass close by him, the smith, in obedience to a
resistless impulse, exclaimed, as he rushed to the horses' heads: "Help,
friends! stop them!"

"Postilion! ten louis if you ride over him!" cried from the carriage the
military voice of Father d'Aigrigny.

The cholera was still raging. The postilion had heard of the murder of
the poisoners. Already frightened at the sudden attack of Agricola, he
struck him a heavy blow on the head with the butt of his whip which
stretched him senseless on the ground. Then, spurring with all his might,
he urged his three horses into a triple gallop, and the carriage rapidly
disappeared, whilst Agricola's companions, who had neither understood his
actions nor the sense of his words, crowded around the smith, and did
their best to revive him.

CHAPTER XLIV.

REMEMBRANCES.

Other events took place a few days after the fatal evening in which M.
Hardy, fascinated and misled by the deplorable, mystic jargon of Rodin,
had implored Father d'Aigrigny on his knees to remove him far from Paris,
into some deep solitude where he might devote himself to a life of prayer
and ascetic austerities. Marshal Simon, since his arrival in Paris, had
occupied, with his two daughters, a house in the Rue des Trois-Freres.
Before introducing the reader into this modest dwelling, we are obliged
to recall to his memory some preced