"A good end? That! Are you mad?"
"Hers," he answered, "Babette's; she died for Solignac."
"Babette? Dead? Where—?"
I broke off, following the direction of his eyes, but without comprehension. I had forgotten Babette, and remembered her now with a rush of shame. From a triangular patch of gloom where a transverse fallen beam, propped against the wall, buttressed up a mass of wreckage, a sleeve of homespun woollen stuff was thrust. Motes of wood ash and dust of rubble were strewn so thickly over it that I had passed it by as only another wisp of Solignac's torn hangings. Even now it was not until Martin shook these off and Babette's dead hand hung limply down that I understood.
"Poor Babette!" I whispered, "Poor faithful Babette!"
I spoke to myself rather than to Martin, and yet he heard me above the crackle of the pyre settling inch by inch.
"Why would she not be faithful?" he said as roughly as if he grudged her the remorse of my regret; "you make too much of it, Monsieur Gaspard. This is but a little thing to have done, and for what else was she born? We must lift her out somehow; though, but for one thing, I would say leave her where she is."
"Leave her here? Leave Babette in this hell of a place?"
"Where better, with Solignac for a tomb, and the dust of the house she loved to cover her? But we must have her out."
Going down on his knees, he crawled across her into the hollow where the body lay, while I stooped by her, her hand fast in mine as if she were alive and I comforting her. From within came the sound of ripped cloth, and Martin returned, coughing and choking with the dusty smoke.