'You are a learned man, Sir,' added the poor fellow, in a deplorable tone; 'you know all about this sort of statues; may be there is some power, some deviltry, which I do not understand. If you would go and see!'

'Willingly,' said I; 'come along with me.'

'No; I had rather you would go alone.'

I left the hall: the weather had changed during supper, and the rain was beginning to fall with violence. I was about asking for an umbrella, when a sudden thought stopped me. 'I shall make a great fool of myself by going to see if what this drunken fellow has told me, is true. And beside, it is possible he wishes to play some trick upon me, to set these honest country folks a-laughing, and the least that I can get off for will be a good soaking, and an attack of rheumatism.'

I cast from the door a glance toward the statue, which was dripping with water, and then ascended to my chamber, without reëntering the hall. I went to bed, but could not get asleep. All the scenes of the past day were present to my mind. I thought upon this young girl, so beautiful and so pure, abandoned to a brutal drunkard. 'What a detestable thing,' said I to myself, 'is a marriage of convenience!' A magistrate puts on a tri-colored scarf, a priest a stole, and here is one of the finest girls in the world given up to a minotaur! What can two beings who do not love each other have to say at a moment like this, which two real lovers would purchase at the price of their existence? Can a woman ever love a man whom she has once seen make a beast of himself? First impressions are never effaced, and I am sure this Monsieur Alphonse deserves to be hated.'

During my monologue, which I have here much abridged, I heard a great deal of walking to and fro through the house, doors opening and shutting, and carriages leaving: then I seemed to hear upon the staircase the light footsteps of a number of women which were directed toward the end of the corridor opposite my chamber. They were probably the attendants of the bride, whom they were conducting to the bridal chamber. At length they all re-descended the staircase. The door of Madame Peyrade was closed. 'How troubled and sad must this poor girl now feel!' thought I, as I turned myself upon my bed in not the best of humors. A bachelor plays but a sorry part in a house where a wedding is taking place.

Silence reigned for some time, when it was interrupted by heavy footsteps which ascended the stairs. The steps of wood creaked loudly.

'What a booby!' exclaimed I. 'Ten to one, he will fall down the stairs.'

All became tranquil. I took up a book to change the current of my thoughts. It was a statistical work of the department, enriched by a memoir of Monsieur Peyrade upon the Druidical monuments of the district of Prades. I fell asleep at the third page.

I slept badly and awoke a number of times. It might be about five o'clock in the morning, and I had been awake more than twenty minutes, when a cock crew. Day was about breaking. At this moment I distinctly heard the same heavy footsteps, the same creaking of the stairs which I had heard before I went to sleep. It seemed strange. I tried, while yawning, to divine why Monsieur Alphonse should get up so early. I could imagine nothing that seemed probable. I was about closing my eyes, when my attention was again excited by a strange trampling of feet, with which was presently mingled the ringing of bells, and the noise of doors loudly opened; I then distinguished confused outcries.