All the inhabitants of Sairmeuse were congregated on the market-place when Martial rode through the village. They have just heard of the murder at the Borderie, and the abbe was now closeted with the magistrate, relating as far as he could the circumstances of the crime. After a prolonged enquiry, it was eventually reported that a man known as Chupin, a notoriously bad character, had entered the house of Marie-Anne Lacheneur, and taken advantage of her absence to mingle poison with her food; and the said Chupin had been himself assassinated soon after his crime, by a certain Balstain, whose whereabouts were unknown. However, this affair soon interested the district far less than the constant visits which Martial was paying to Madame Blanche. Shortly afterwards it was rumoured that the Marquis and the Marchioness de Sairmeuse were reconciled; and indeed a few weeks later, they left for Paris with an intention of residing there permanently. A day or two after their departure, the eldest of the Chupins also announced his determination of taking up his abode in the same great city. Some of his friends endeavoured to dissuade him, assuring him that he would certainly die of starvation; but with singular assurance, he replied: “On the contrary, I have an idea that I shan’t want for anything so long as I live there.” XXXV. Time gradually heals all wounds; and its effacing fingers spare but few traces of events; which in their season may have absorbed the attention of many thousand minds. What remained to attest the reality of that fierce whirlwind of passion which had swept over the peaceful valley of the Oiselle? Only a charred ruin on La Reche, and a grave in the cemetery, on which was inscribed: “Marie-Anne Lacheneur, died at the age of twenty. Pray for her!” Recent as were the events of which that ruin and that grave stone seemed as it were the prologue and the epilogue, they were already relegated to the legendary past. The peasantry of Sairmeuse had other things to think about--the harvest, the weather, their sheep and cattle, and it was only a few old men, the politicians of the village, who at times turned their attention from agricultural incidents to remember the rising of Montaignac. Sometimes, during the long winter evenings, when they were gathered together at the local hostelry of the Boeuf Couronne, they would lay down their greasy cards and gravely discuss the events of the past year. And they never failed to remark that almost all the actors in that bloody drama at Montaignac had in common parlance, “come to a bad end.” The victors and the vanquished seemed to encounter the same fate. Lacheneur had been beheaded; Chanlouineau, shot; Marie-Anne, poisoned, and Chupin, the traitor, the Duke de Sairmeuse’s spy, stabbed to death. It was true that the Marquis de Courtornieu lived, or rather survived, but death would have seemed a mercy in comparison with such a total annihilation of intelligence.