Maurice was intoxicated with joy. He understood the irregularity of such a marriage, but he knew it would reassure Marie-Anne’s troubled conscience. Poor girl! she was suffering an agony of remorse. It was that which was killing her. However, he did not speak to her on the matter, fearing lest something might occur to interfere with the project. But the old physician had not spoken lightly, and everything took place as he had promised. The priest at Vigano blessed the marriage of Maurice d’Escorval and Marie-Anne Lacheneur, and after inscribing their names upon the church register, he gave them a certificate, which the physician and Corporal Bavois signed as witnesses. That same evening the mules were sent back to Saliente, and the fugitives resumed their journey. The Abbe Midon had advised them to reach Turin as quickly as possible. “It is a large city,” he had said, when bidding them good-bye near Father Poignot’s house, “you will be lost in the crowd. I have several friends there, whose names and addresses are on this paper. Go to them, for through them I will try to send you news of M. d’Escorval.” So it was towards Turin that Maurice, Marie-Anne, and Corporal Bavois directed their steps. Their progress was slow, however, for they were obliged to avoid the more frequented roads, and renounce all ordinary modes of transport. Still the fatigue of travel, instead of exhausting Marie-Anne, seemed to revive her, and when five or six days had elapsed the colour came back to her cheeks, and her strength had fully returned. “Fate seems to have abandoned the pursuit,” said Maurice one day. “Who knows but what the future may have many compensations in store for us!” But he was mistaken. Fate far from forgetting them had merely granted them a short respite. One April morning the fugitives stopped to breakfast at an inn in the outskirts of a large town. Maurice had finished eating, and was just leaving the table to settle with the landlady, when Marie-Anne uttered a loud shriek and fell back on her chair. She held in her hand a French newspaper about a fortnight old, which she had found lying on the sideboard where some traveller had probably left it. Maurice seized the print rapidly, and read as follows, “Lacheneur, the leader of the revolt in Montaignac, was executed yesterday. The miserable mischief-maker exhibited on the scaffold the audacity for which he had always been famous.” “My father has been put to death!” cried Marie-Anne, “and I--his daughter--was not there to receive his last farewell!” She rose, and in an imperious voice: “I will go no farther,” she said; “we must turn back now without losing an instant. I wish to return to France.”