Laubardemont replied with a hideous laugh: 

“As for this idiot here, I am going to give her to an ex-secret judge, at present a smuggler in the Pyrenees at Oleron.  He can do what he pleases with her—­make her a servant in his posada, for instance.  I care not, so that my lord never hears of her.”

Jeanne de Belfiel, her head hanging down, gave no sign of sensibility.  Every glimmer of reason was extinguished in her; one word alone remained upon her lips, and this she continually pronounced.

“The judge! the judge! the judge!” she murmured, and was silent.

Her uncle and Joseph threw her, almost like a sack of corn, on one of the horses which were led up by two servants.  Laubardemont mounted another, and prepared to leave the camp, wishing to get into the mountains before day.

“A good journey to you!” he said to Joseph.  “Execute your business well in Paris.  I commend to you Orestes and Pylades.”

“A good journey to you!” answered the other.  “I commend to you Cassandra and OEdipus.”

“Oh! he has neither killed his father nor married his mother.”

“But he is on the high-road to those little pleasantries.”

“Adieu, my reverend Father!”

“Adieu, my venerable friend!”

Then each added aloud, but in suppressed tones: 

“Adieu, assassin of the gray robe!  During thy absence I shall have the ear of the Cardinal.”

“Adieu, villain in the red robe!  Go thyself and destroy thy cursed family.  Finish shedding that portion of thy blood that is in others’ veins.  That share which remains in thee, I will take charge of.  Ha! a well-employed night!”

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CINQ MARS

By ALFRED DE VIGNY

BOOK 4.

CHAPTER XIV

THE RIOT

       “Thus with imagin’d wing our swift scene flies,
        In motion of no less celerity
        Than that of thought,”

exclaims the immortal Shakespeare in the chorus of one of his tragedies.

“Suppose that you have seen The well-appointed king Embark his royalty; and his brave fleet With silken streamers the young Phoebus fanning. . . . . . . . . . behold, And follow.”

With this poetic movement he traverses time and space, and transports at will the attentive assembly to the theatre of his sublime scenes.

We shall avail ourselves of the same privilege, though without the same genius.  No more than he shall we seat ourselves upon the tripod of the unities, but merely casting our eyes upon Paris and the old dark palace of the Louvre, we will at once pass over the space of two hundred leagues and the period of two years.