“I will find them!” she exclaimed, in frenzied accents. “I will go to the field of battle, I will seek for them among the dead, until I find them. Light some torches, my friends, and come with me, for you will aid me, will you not? You loved them; they were so good! You would not leave their dead bodies unburied! oh! the wretches! the wretches who have killed them!”
The servants were hastening to obey when the furious gallop of a horse and the sound of carriage-wheels were heard upon the drive.
“Here they are!” exclaimed the gardener; “here they are!”
Mme. d’Escorval, followed by the servants, rushed to the door just in time to see a cabriolet enter the court-yard, and the horse, panting, exhausted, and flecked with foam, miss his footing, and fall.
Abbe Midon and Maurice had already leaped to the ground and were lifting out an apparently lifeless body.
Even Marie-Anne’s great energy had not been able to resist so many successive shocks; the last trial had overwhelmed her. Once in the carriage, all immediate danger having disappeared, the excitement which had sustained her fled. She became unconscious, and all the efforts of Maurice and of the priest had failed to restore her.
But Mme. d’Escorval did not recognize Mlle. Lacheneur in the masculine habiliments in which she was clothed.
She only saw that it was not her husband whom they had brought with them; and a convulsive shudder shook her from head to foot.
“Your father, Maurice!” she exclaimed, in a stifled voice; “and your father!”
The effect was terrible. Until that moment, Maurice and the cure had comforted themselves with the hope that M. d’Escorval would reach home before them.