This thought haunted him day and night, and with one so unscrupulous the sequel may easily be guessed.
One night the chaplain was roughly wakened by a hand being heavily laid on his throat, and he found a masked man standing over him, armed with a bayonet, and commanding him to yield his ill-gotten wealth on pain of instant death!
A loud cry, cut short by a death-stab in the throat followed, and, in less than a minute, the chevalier found himself a prisoner in the hands of the startled quarter-guard, beside the dead body of his comrade and with a blood-dripping bayonet, as a terrible testimony against him.
A court-martial next day made short work with him, and he was sentenced to death—a doom which he met with the most singular coolness and contempt. His fate was announced to him at night, and he was chained to a tree lest he should escape before reveille next morning, when the sentence was to be put in execution. He conversed with his guards, smoked, laughed and sang catches, and was provokingly cool and gay to the last. On perceiving his old brother student, Robertson, loitering near him, he said,
"You have the odds of me to-night, mon ami; but a Prussian bullet ere long may, perhaps, enable you to overtake me en route to the infernal regions."
"Be thankful, chevalier, that you end your life in camp, and not in Paris," replied the Mousquetaire, quietly.
"Wherefore?"
"Because a soldier's death and a soldier's grave are a better fate than a felon's on the dissecting-table."
"Perhaps so—peste! unpleasant thought to have a parcel of medical gamins amusing themselves with one's intestines and arteries."
"Think, sir," said Allen, gravely and with pity, "you are to die to-morrow morning."