From above the height seemed immense. Below, in the barren fields surrounding the citadel, eight persons were waiting, silent, anxious, breathless with suspense. They were Madame d’Escorval and Maurice, Marie-Anne, the Abbe Midon, and four retired officers. There was no moon, but the night was very clear, and they could see the tower plainly. Soon after four o’clock struck from the church steeples, they perceived a dark object glide slowly down the side of the tower--this was the baron. A short interval and then another form followed rapidly--this was Bavois. Half of the perilous journey was accomplished. The watchers below could see the two figures moving about on the narrow platform. The corporal and the baron were exerting all their strength to fix the crowbar securely in a crevice of the rock. Suddenly one of the figures stepped forward and glided gently down the side of the precipice. It could be none other than M. d’Escorval. Transported with happiness, his wife sprang forward with open arms to receive him. Alas! at that same moment a terrible cry rent the still night air. M. d’Escorval was falling from a height of fifty feet; he was being hurled to the foot of the precipice. The rope had parted. Had it broken naturally? Maurice examined it; and then with a vow of vengeance exclaimed that they had been betrayed--that their enemy had arranged to deliver only a dead body into their hands--that the rope had been foully tampered with, intentionally cut with a knife beforehand! XXI. Father Chupin, the false witness and the crafty spy, had refrained from sleeping and almost from drinking ever since that unfortunate morning when the Duke de Sairmeuse affixed to the walls of Montaignac the decree in which he promised twenty thousand francs to the person who delivered up Lacheneur, dead or alive. “Twenty thousand francs,” muttered the old rascal gloomily; “twenty sacks with a hundred golden pistoles in each! Ah! if I could only discover this Lacheneur, even if he were dead and buried a hundred feet under ground, I should gain the reward.”