The people around grew impatient. The executioner lifted his sword. The victim looked up at it, half fearfully, half meekly, like a penitent child at the impending rod. He fell, without a sign or a cry; and at the moment, the flames burst forth from the lower windows, as if to lick up, in as summary a vengeance as they had been guilty of, the perpetrators of this murder. All rushed from the terrace, with a yell of consternation, leaving the body alone, its unclosed eyes shining in the glare, as if gazing unmoved on that violence which could no longer reach it in the shape of injury.—When the gust fell, and the flames retired some space, the ruffian who held the sword returned to the place of execution, severed the head, tossed the body into the flames, and returned with his trophy to the cheering mob. There was nothing for Charles and Antoine to stay for. They could neither save property, nor prevent crime. There was no purpose to be answered by an attempt to do the first; for the lady Alice could never return hither, or probably find any corner of her native land in which to dwell in peace. Any endeavour to check the people’s rage would only have brought on more murders. It was better that they should occupy themselves with destroying inanimate things than have their wrath directed upon human objects. The brothers therefore left them endeavouring to discover the treasure-chamber, and paced silently homewards, trying whether, after such a spectacle as this, their hopefulness could get the better of their heart-sickness. -------------- CHAPTER IX. ADJUSTMENT. Marguerite began to think that she and her family had better have staid in Paris, since violence as foul as any there, with less chance of redress, took place in the country. But as there were fewer marked for destruction in a thinly peopled than in a crowded district, the work of horror was sooner over; and within a few weeks, all was quiet around her dwelling. No judicial inquiry whatever was made into the fate of the marquis; and night after night, ominous gleams were seen from afar, marking where life and property were being offered up in expiation of former tyranny. When every neighbouring chateau that was empty had been sealed up and guarded by the people from being entered by its owners; and when every inhabited one had been dismantled or converted into a pile of blackened ruins, there was a truce. The gentry sighed over the abolition of feudalism; the peasantry gloried in the destruction of the aristocracy; and both, looking no farther than their own borders, supposed that all was over, and the state of the country,—miserable as it was,—settled.