Few children, were to be seen, and no dogs.
As to the men and women, their choice on earth
was stated in the prospect—Life on the lowest
terms that could sustain it, down in the little
village under the mill; or captivity and Death
in the dominant prison on the crag.

Heralded by a courier in advance, and by the
cracking of his postilions' whips, which twined
snake-like about their heads in the evening air,
as if he came attended by the Furies, Monsieur
the Marquis drew up in his travelling carriage
at the posting-house gate. It was hard
by the fountain, and the peasants suspended
their operations to look at him. He looked at
them, and saw in them, without knowing it, the
slow sure filing down of misery-worn face and
figure, that was to make the meagreness of
Frenchmen an English superstition which should
survive the truth through the best part of a
hundred years.

Monsieur the Marquis cast his eyes over the
submissive faces that drooped before him, as the
like of himself had drooped before Monseigneur
of the Court—only the difference was, that these
faces drooped merely to suffer and not to propitiate
—when a grizzled mender of the roads
joined the group.

"Bring me hither that fellow!" said the Marquis
to the courier.

The fellow was brought, cap in hand, and the
other fellows closed round to look and listen,
in the manner of the people at the Paris fountain.

"I passed you on the road?"

"Monseigneur, it is true. I had the honour
of being passed on the road."

"Coming up the hill, and at the top of the
hill, both?"

"Monseigneur, it is true."

"What did you look at, so fixedly?"

"Monseigneur, I looked at the man."

He stooped a little, and with his tattered blue
cap pointed under the carriage. All his fellows
stooped to look under the carriage.

"What man, pig? And why look there?"

"Pardon, Monseigueur; he swung by the
chain of the shoe—the drag."

"Who?" demanded the traveller.

"Monseigneur, the man."

"May the Devil carry away these idiots!
How do you call the man? You know all the
men of this part of the country. Who was he?"

"Your clemency, Monseigneur! He was not
of this part of the country. Of all the days of
my life, I never saw him."

"Swinging by the chain? To be suffocated?"

"With your gracious permission, that was
the wonder of it, Monseigneur. His head hanging
over—like this!"

He turned himself sideways to the carriage,
and leaned back, with his face thrown up to the
sky, and his head hanging down; then recovered
himself, fumbled with his cap, and made a bow.

"What was he like?"

"Monseigneur, he was whiter than the miller.
All covered with dust, white as a spectre, tall
as a spectre!"

The picture produced an immense sensation
in the little crowd; but all eyes, without comparing
notes with other eyes, looked at Monsieur
the Marquis. Perhaps, to observe whether
he had any spectre on his conscience.

''Truly, you did well," said the Marquis,
felicitously sensible that such vermin were not to
ruffle him, "to see a thief accompanying my
carriage, and not open that great mouth of
yours. Bah! Put him aside, Monsieur Gabelle!"

Monsieur Gabelle was the Postmaster, and
some other taxing functionary, united; he had
come out with great obsequiousness to assist
at this examination, and had held the examined
by the drapery of his arm in an official manner.

"Bah! Go aside!" said Monsieur Gabelle.

"Lay hands on this stranger if he seeks to
lodge in your village to-night, and be sure that
his business is honest, Gabelle."

"Monseigneur, I am flattered to devote myself
to your orders."

"Did he run away, fellow?—where is that
Accursed?"

The accursed was already under the carriage
with some half-dozen particular friends, pointing
out the chain with his blue cap. Some half-dozen
other particular friends promptly haled him out,
and presented him breathless to Monsieur the
Marquis.

"Did the man run away, Dolt, when we
stopped for the drag?"

"Monseigneur, he precipitated himself over
the hill-side, head first, as a person plunges into
the river."

"See to it, Gabelle. Go on!"

The half-dozen who were peering at the chain
were still among the wheels, like sheep; the
wheels turned so suddenly that they were lucky
to save their skins and bone; they had very
little else to save, or they might not have been
so fortunate.

The burst with which the carriage started out
of the village and up the rise beyond, was soon
checked by the steepness of the hill. Gradually, it
subsided to a foot pace, swinging and lumbering
upward among the many sweet scents of a
summer night. The postilions, with a thousand
gossamer gnats circling about them in lieu of the
Furies, quietly mended the points to the lashes
of their whips; the valet walked by the horses;
the courier was audible, trotting on ahead into
the dim distance.

At the steepest point of the hill there was a
little burial-ground, with a Cross and a new large
figure of Our Saviour on it; it was a poor figure
in wood, done by some inexperienced rustic
carver, but he had studied the figure from the
life—his own life, maybe—for it was dreadfully
spare and thin.

To this distressful emblem of a great distress
that had long been growing worse, and was not
at its worst, a woman was kneeling. She
turned her head as the carriage came up to her,
rose quickly, and presented herself at the carriage-
door.

"It is you, Monseigneur! Monseigneur, a
petition!"