On that day her first adventure was in a village through which her route lay; the dawn was barely breaking, and the dusk of night still shrouded all the surrounding objects; but in the principal village street a few doors were half open, and curious faces peeped out of the windows. The inhabitants seemed restless like a startled hive of bees,--a disturbance due to the noise of wheels and the clanking of iron, which had reached their ears. On the square in front of the church, a frightened group was staring at some object that was descending the hill towards the village. It was a four-wheeled wagon drawn by five horses, whose harness was composed of chains, and upon which could be seen something that looked like a pile of long joists, in the middle of which lay an object whose vague outlines were hidden by a large canvas resembling a pall. Ten horsemen rode in front of the wagon, and ten behind. They wore three-cornered hats, and above their shoulders rose what seemed like the points of naked sabres. The whole procession advanced slowly, its dark outlines sharply defined against the horizon; everything looked black,--the wagon, the harness, and the riders. On entering the village they approached the square with the pale glimmer of the dawn behind them. It had grown somewhat lighter while the wagon was descending the hill, and now the escort was plainly to be seen,--a procession of ghosts to ail intents, for no man uttered a word. The horsemen were gendarmes; they really were carrying drawn sabres, and the canvas that covered the wagon was black. The wretched wandering mother, entering the village from the opposite direction, just as the wagon and the gendarmes reached the square, approached the crowd of peasants and heard voices whispering the following questions and answers,-- "What is that?" "It's the guillotine." "Where does it come from?" "From Fougères." "Where is it going?" "I don't know. They say it is going to some castle near Parigné." "Parigné!" "Let it go wherever it will, so that it does not stop here." There was something ghostlike in the combination of this great wagon with its shrouded burden, the gendarmes, the clanking chains of the team, and the silent men, in the early dawn. The group crossed the square and passed out from the village, which lay in a hollow between two hills. In a quarter of an hour the peasants who had stood there like men petrified saw the funereal procession reappear on the summit of the western hill. The great wheels jolted in the ruts, the chains of the harness rattled as they were shaken by the early morning wind, the sabres shone; the sun was rising, and at a bend of the road all vanished from the sight. It was at this very moment that Georgette woke up in the library beside her still sleeping brothers, and wished her rosy feet good-morning. II. DEATH SPEAKS.