On her way she stumbled over something; that something was a dead body. With a horrible expression of anguish she stooped to look at the livid face, turning it toward her by the hair. Then, seeing other bodies scattered on the ground, she went wildly from one to another as if beside herself.
"Alas! mademoiselle," said Courte-Joie, "he is not here. To spare you this dreadful sight, I had already ordered Trigaud, who came here first, to look at those bodies. He has seen Monsieur de la Logerie two or three times, and idiot though he be, you can be sure he would have recognized him were he here among the dead."
"Yes, yes, you are right; and if he is anywhere--" cried Bertha, pointing to the ruins; and before the two men could stop her, she sprang upon the sill of a window on the ground-floor, and there, standing on the heated stone, she looked down into the gulf of fire still belching at her feet, into which it almost seemed as though she were about to fling herself.
At a sign from Courte-Joie Trigaud seized the girl round her waist and placed her at some distance on the grass. Bertha made no resistance, for an idea had just crossed her brain which paralyzed her will.
"My God!" she cried, as if with a last expiring sigh of her former strength, "you denied me the power to defend him or to die with him; and you now deny me the consolation of giving burial to his body."
"But mademoiselle," said Courte-Joie, "if it is the will of the good God you must resign yourself to it."
"Never! never! never!" cried Bertha, with the excitement of despair.
"Alas!" said the cripple, "my heart is heavy too; for if Monsieur de la Logerie is down there, so is poor Jean Oullier."
Bertha groaned; in the selfishness of her grief she had never once thought of Jean Oullier. "It's true," continued Courte-Joie, "he dies as he wished to die--with arms in his hand; but that doesn't console me for thinking he is down there."
"Is there no hope?" cried Bertha. "Couldn't they have escaped in some way? Oh, let us look! let us search!"