that the secretary had collapsed, and hung limp in his bonds, his
head fallen back upon his shoulders and his eyes closed.

With a shrug and a short laugh Bellecour turned to his daughter.

"You may take the carrion, if you want to. But I think you can do
no more than order it to be flung into a ditch and buried there."

But she had no mind to be advised by him. She had the young man's
body cut down from the pump, and she bade a couple of servants
convey it to the house of Master Duhamel, she for remembered that
La Boulaye and the old pedagogue were friends.

"An odd thing is a woman's heart," grumbled the Marquis, who
begrudged La Boulaye even his last act of mercy. "She may care
never a fig for a man, and yet, if he has but told her that he
loves her, be he never so mean and she never so exalted, he seems
thereby to establish some measure of claim to her."




CHAPTER IV

THE DISCIPLES OF ROUSSEAU


The Marquis of Bellecour would, perhaps have philosophised less
complacently had he known that the secretary was far from dead,
and that what the executioner had, genuinely enough, mistaken for