Mlle. Blanche de Courtornieu smiled as brightly as ever in the midst of a stricken people; and surrounded by mourners, her lovely eyes remained dry.
The daughter of a man who, for a week, exercised the power of a dictator, she did not lift her finger to save a single one of the condemned prisoners from the executioner.
They had stopped her carriage on the public road. This was a crime which Mlle. de Courtornieu could never forget.
She also knew that she owed it to Marie-Anne’s intercession that she had not been held prisoner. This she could never forgive.
So it was with the bitterest resentment that, on the morning following her arrival in Montaignac, she recounted what she styled her “humiliations” to her father, i.e., the inconceivable arrogance of that Lacheneur girl, and the frightful brutality of which the peasants had been guilty.
And when the Marquis de Courtornieu asked if she would consent to testify against Baron d’Escorval, she coldly replied:
“I think that such is my duty, and I shall fulfil it, however painful it may be.”
She knew perfectly well that her deposition would be the baron’s death-warrant; but she persisted in her resolve, veiling her hatred and her insensibility under the name of virtue.
But we must do her the justice to admit that her testimony was sincere.
She really believed that it was Baron d’Escorval who was with the rebels, and whose opinion Chanlouineau had asked.