"A thousand francs a year to you, my dear child, if you can tell Gorenflot to leave a crack at the bottom.--Go and help him," she said coolly, aloud. Monsieur and Madame de Merret said not a word while Gorenflot was walling up the door. That silence was the result of design on the husband's part, for he did not choose to allow his wife a pretext for uttering words of double meaning; and on Madame de Merret's part, it was either prudence or pride. When the wall was half built, the crafty mason seized a moment when the gentleman's back was turned, to strike his pickaxe through one of the panes of the glass door. That act gave Madame de Merret to understand that Rosalie had spoken to Gorenflot. At that moment all three saw a man's face, dark and sombre, with black hair and fiery eyes. Before her husband had turned, the poor woman had time to make a motion of her head to the stranger, to whom that signal meant, "Hope!" At four o'clock, about daybreak, for it was September, the work was finished. The mason remained in the house under the eye of Jean, and Monsieur de Merret slept in his wife's chamber. In the morning, on rising, he said carelessly: "Ah! by the way, I must go to the mayor's office for the passport." He put his hat on his head, walked towards the door, turned back and took the crucifix. His wife fairly trembled with joy. "He will go to Duvivier's," she thought. As soon as the gentleman had left the room, Madame de Merret rang for Rosalie; then in a terrible voice she cried: "The pickaxe! the pickaxe! and to work! I saw how Gorenflot understood last night; we shall have time to make a hole, and stop it up." In a twinkling Rosalie brought her mistress a sort of small axe, and she, with an ardour which no words can describe, began to demolish the wall. She had already loosened several bricks, when, as she stepped back to deal a blow even harder than the preceding ones, she saw Monsieur de Merret behind her; she fainted. "Put madame on her bed," said the gentleman, coldly. Anticipating what was likely to happen during his absence, he had laid a trap for his wife; he had simply written to the mayor, and had sent a messenger to Duvivier. The jeweller arrived just as the disorder in the room had been repaired. "Duvivier," asked Monsieur de Merret, "didn't you buy some crucifixes from the Spaniards who passed through here?" "No, monsieur." "Very well; I thank you," he said, exchanging with his wife a tigerlike glance.--"Jean," he added, turning towards his confidential servant, "you will have my meals served in Madame de Merret's room; she is ill, and I shall not leave her until she is well again." The cruel man remained with his wife twenty days. During the first days, when there was a noise in the walled-up closet and Josephine attempted to implore him in behalf of the dying unknown, he replied, not allowing her to utter a word: "You have sworn on the cross that there was no one there." 1832. The Conscript