"My blood is upon your head, Francine! Have you any money?" "Yes, yes! a gentleman, a _noir_, a _naigre_, for whom I have washed, paid me fifty francs this evening. It is all here; take it, my love!" "I do not know, creature! that your conduct permits me to do so," said Pisgah, drawing back. "You will drive me mad if you refuse," shrieked the blanchisseuse. "Oh! oh! how wicked and wretched am I!" "Enough, madame! step over the way for my habitual glass of absinthe. Be particular about the change. We military men must be careful of our incomes. Stay! you may embrace me if you like." The poor woman came every day to the barracks, bringing some trifle of food or clothing. She washed his regimentals, burnished his buckles and boots, paid his losses at cards, and bought him books and tobacco. She could never persuade herself that Pisgah was not her victim, and he found it useful to humor the notion. Down in the swift Seine, at her booth in the great lavatory, where the ice rushed by and the rain beat in, she thought of Pisgah as she toiled; and though her back ached and her hands were flayed, she never wondered if her lot were not the most pitiable, and his in part deserved. How often should we hard, selfish men, thank God for the weaknesses of women! VIII. THE MURDER ON THE ALPS. And so, with Mr. Pisgah on the road to glory, Mr. Simp on the smooth sea, Mr. Freckle in the debtor's jail, Mr. Risque behind his four-in-hand, and Mr. Lees in the charity grave, let us sit with the two remaining colonists in the cabriolet at Bellinzona; for it is the month of April, and they are to cross the great St. Gothard _en route_ for Paris. Here is the scene: a gloomy stone building for the diligence company; two great yellow diligences, empty and unharnessed in the area before; one other diligence, packed full, with the horses' heads turned northward, and the blue-nosed Swiss clerk calling out the names of passengers; a half-dozen cabriolets looking at each other irresolutely and facing all possible ways; two score of unwashed loungers, in red neck-kerchiefs and velvet jackets, smoking rank, rakish, black cigars; several streets of equal crookedness and filthiness abutting against a grimy church, whence beggars, old women, and priests emerge continually; and far above all, as if suspended in the air, a grim, battlemented castle, a defence, as it seems, against the snowy mountains which march upon Bellinzona from every side to crush its orchards and vineyards and drown it in the marshes of Lago Maggiore. "_Diligenza compito!_" cries the clerk, moving toward the waiting cabriolet--"Signore Hugenoto." "Here!" replies a small, consequential-looking person, reconnoitring the interior of the vehicle. "Le Signore Plaedo!" "Ci," responds a dark, erect gentleman, striding forward and saying, in clear Italian, "Are there no other passengers?" "None," answered the clerk; "you will have a good time together; please remember the guard!"