diismal guillotine was plied in the suburb of
the Croix Rousse, until the knife was notched
and blunted, and the headsmen's arms were
weary with hauling at cord and pulley, and the
yelling mob had grown hoarse. She was mixed
up, traditionally, with the attack and conflagration
of the Château de Rochaigue, and there
were vague rumours of some great wrong that
had been done to her or hers by a former
seigneur of the castle, and which had been thus
avenged.

"Certain it is, sir, that though the Cape
Rouge hates all the noblesse, she hates our
master and his family worst of all, and never
speaks of the Vauxmesnils but with a curse.
She has seldom appeared here, and never but as
the precursor of sorrow, the saints be with us!"

I tried to laugh the old man out of his superstitious
apprehensions, but in vain. He shook his
head, and overwhelmed me with melancholy facts
gathered from the storehouse of his memory.
The Cape Rouge had appeared just one week
before the younger sister of the marquis had
sickened of a fever which carried her off on the
very day fixed for the wedding. On the morning
of the day when M. de Vauxmesnil's uncle,
from whom he had inherited the title and
property, was shot in a duel at Paris, the fatal red
cape had fluttered among the ruins. And, again,
when the great process was lost, by which the
marquis failed to re-establish his fallen fortunes,
and when the political earthquake happened
which deprived the Vauxmesnils of place and
power, the same evil-omened visitor had haunted
the château.

That Pierre Ducosse, gardener, and ex-corporal
in the Garde Royale of Charles the Tenth, should
believe in the supernatural powers and malignity
of the Mère Chardon, was not wonderful; but
I was surprised to find that the priest of the
village in some degree shared his opinions.
This priest, M. Tonot, came often to the château,
and was always welcomed, though less in his
spiritual capacity than as a healer of bodily
ailments. It is not unusual for a curé,
especially in remote and poor places, to possess a
smattering of medicine; and as the parish did
not boast a doctor, M. Tonot's simple lore was
in frequent request. There was a surgeon in a
neighbouring commune, to be sure, and good
medical attendance was of course procurable from
Lyons; but the marquis had an odd antipathy to
doctors—the "trumpeters of revolution," he
styled them—and so the curé had to prescribe,
alike for the feeble health of the marquise and for
the infantine ailments of the young heir. I liked
M. Tonot very well. He was a tall stout
portly man, with a wholesome florid face, an
honest common-place mind, and a deep quiet
sense of duty. The poor were fond of M.
Tonot, so were the children and dogs of the
village, and Madame de Vauxmesnil always
had a smile of welcome for him. But the
marquis, who was kind to the priest in his way,
mixed a good deal of contempt with his regard.
Indeed, such an ecclesiastic as M. Tonot was
hardly adapted to please M. de Vauxrnesnil.
He was neither ambitious nor witty, neither a
cynical jesting sprightly abbé, with poetry and
the classics at his finger ends, nor a dark-
browed ultramontane, cork-screwing his way to
notoriety and a bishopric.

"Eh! You have seen her then, the unfortunate!
Poor soul, she has suffered in her time,
I fear, and no wonder that her temper is soured,"
said M. Tonot, when I questioned him on the
subject of the Cape Rouge. "It is
wonderful, monsieur, how accurately some of her
predictions have turned out, sinister as they
always are—for she bears no love to the family
at the château."

The priest could tell me little more. Even
Mary Chardon's age was unknown, the church
registers having been burned at the Revolution.
How she lived was doubtful, but it was known
that she derived some support from the fears or
from the pity of the peasants, though she never
begged. She was no sham sorceress, such as are
common in the French provinces, telling
fortunes for a silver fee, and vending charms against
mildew and blight, murrain and oidium. She
had no living relatives, and none knew the cause
of her vindictive spite towards the Vauxmesnils,
though the old crone had been heard to mutter,
"Blood for blood, tears for tears, sorrow for
shame!"

"Old stories, monsieur; tales before the
Flood," said M. Tonot, with a shrug; "but it
is surprising how keen the old woman's scent is
for any misfortune about to overtake the
Vauxmesnils. You smile, monsieur. You are an
esprit fort, I see: all you English are."

Time went on, and nothing occurred to justify
these remarks. The weird figure was never
seen again among the ruins during my
residence at the château, and I began to forget
it. M. de Vauxmesnil, though comparatively
a poor nobleman, was owner of a good deal
of property, which might have been worth
much more had it been sensibly managed. On
this head, however, his prejudices interposed.
The métairie system was that which had suited
his ancestors, and to this system he obstinately
adhered, at a considerable loss of rental. The
agriculture of his estates was singularly backward,
progress made no way there, and new-
fangled machines and modern breeds of cattle
were discouraged. When the prefect of the
department publicly congratulated the notables on
the improvements that yearly took place, he
could not deny himself the pleasure of a civil
sneer at the ponderous ploughs, the ill-drained
fields, and the gaunt coarse-woolled sheep on the
Vauxmesnil property. But this censure on the
part of a Bonapartist functionary was enough to
confirm the marquis in his antiquated habits,
and he politely derided all that I could hint on
the subject.

In one matter the fancies of the marquis
and his farmers went hand in hand; and this
was the wholesale slaughter of small birds.
The French tiller of the soil has a deep prejudice
on this score; small birds, says Jacques Bonhomme,
eat wheat, and peck grapes and cherries: