“Oh! that is the beautiful Mme. Séchard,” voices said here and there. “I should never have believed it of her,” said a woman. “The husband is in hiding, and the wife walks abroad,” said Mme. Postel for young Mme. Séchard’s benefit. “Oh, let us go home,” said poor Eve; “I have made a mistake.” A few minutes before sunset, the sound of a crowd rose from the steps that lead down to L’Houmeau. Apparently some crime had been committed, for persons coming from L’Houmeau were talking among themselves. Curiosity drew Lucien and Eve towards the steps. “A thief has just been arrested no doubt, the man looks as pale as death,” one of these passers-by said to the brother and sister. The crowd grew larger. Lucien and Eve watched a group of some thirty children, old women and men, returning from work, clustering about the gendarmes, whose gold-laced caps gleamed above the heads of the rest. About a hundred persons followed the procession, the crowd gathering like a storm cloud. “Oh! it is my husband!” Eve cried out. _“David!”_ exclaimed Lucien. “It is his wife,” said voices, and the crowd made way. “What made you come out?” asked Lucien. “Your letter,” said David, haggard and white. “I knew it!” said Eve, and she fainted away. Lucien raised his sister, and with the help of two strangers he carried her home; Marion laid her in bed, and Kolb rushed off for a doctor. Eve was still insensible when the doctor arrived; and Lucien was obliged to confess to his mother that he was the cause of David’s arrest; for he, of course, knew nothing of the forged letter and Cérizet’s stratagem. Then he went up to his room and locked himself in, struck dumb by the malediction in his mother’s eyes. In the dead of night he wrote one more letter amid constant interruptions; the reader can divine the agony of the writer’s mind from those phrases, jerked out, as it were, one by one:--