It was not until the evening of the third day that they heard Marie-Anne utter a word.

“Poor girl!” she sighed; “poor, wretched girl!”

It was of herself that she spoke.

By a phenomenon not very unusual after a crisis in which reason has been temporarily obscured, it seemed to her that it was someone else who had been the victim of all the misfortunes, whose recollections gradually returned to her like the memory of a painful dream.

What strange and terrible events had taken place since that August Sabbath, when, on leaving the church with her father, she heard of the arrival of the Duc de Sairmeuse.

And that was only eight months ago.

What a difference between those days when she lived happy and envied in that beautiful Chateau de Sairmeuse, of which she believed herself the mistress, and at the present time, when she found herself lying in the comfortless room of a miserable country inn, attended by an old woman whom she did not know, and with no other protection than that of an old soldier—­a deserter, whose life was in constant danger—­and that of her proscribed lover.

From this total wreck of her cherished ambitions, of her hopes, of her fortune, of her happiness, and of her future, she had not even saved her honor.

But was she alone responsible?  Who had imposed upon her the odious role which she had played with Maurice, Martial, and Chanlouineau?

As this last name darted through her mind, the scene in the prison-cell rose suddenly and vividly before her.

Chanlouineau had given her a letter, saying as he did so: 

“You will read this when I am no more.”

She might read it now that he had fallen beneath the bullets of the soldiery.  But what had become of it?  From the moment that he gave it to her until now she had not once thought of it.

She raised herself in bed, and in an imperious voice: 

“My dress,” she said to the old nurse, seated beside her; “give me my dress.”

The woman obeyed; with an eager hand Marie-Anne examined the pocket.

She uttered an exclamation of joy on finding the letter there.

She opened it, read it slowly twice, then, sinking back on her pillows, she burst into tears.

Maurice anxiously approached her.

“What is the matter?” he inquired anxiously.

She handed him the letter, saying:  “Read.”

Chanlouineau was only a poor peasant.  His entire education had been derived from an old country pedagogue, whose school he attended for three winters, and who troubled himself much less about the progress of his students than about the size of the books which they carried to and from the school.

This letter, which was written upon the commonest kind of paper, was sealed with a huge wafer, as large as a two-sou piece, which he had purchased from a grocer in Sairmeuse.