“‘So she gave each of the children a morsel of bread and a piece of the curd-cheese eaten by the poor peasants in that part of the country, and they all three sought in haste and silence the bundle of straw allotted to their use. Here they slept soundly until the dawn. Jeanne was the first to wake, and, on perceiving the sunbeams struggling through the loop-hole in the wall, rose with the hope of having better luck than on the preceding day, and hurriedly gathered on her rags, determined to set forth at once upon her daily errand. She was just preparing to rouse her little brother, when she was struck with terror, on turning to bid adieu to her father, to perceive that he was still seated in the chimney-nook, in the same attitude in which she had found him on returning to the tower on the evening before. He had passed the whole night seated thus without moving; his head still drooping on his bosom—his hand still pressed upon his heart! There was something so unnatural in this immobility, that the child, young as she was, felt overcome with dread. She approached the count and listened, but she heard not his breathing, nothing but the beating of her own heart. She laid her hand upon his shoulder, and pushed him gently. “‘Father, it is time to rise!’ said she, in a low voice, and then the loud shriek, which burst from her lips, echoed through the tower, and roused from their slumber the two babes, who ran crying towards her. “‘The body of her father had yielded to her touch, and had sunk forward into the fire-place, where it lay upon the hearth, among the cold ashes. It was evident that he had been dead for many hours, and, in her fright, poor Jeanne, scarcely knowing what to do, seized the little Marguerite in her arms, and ran screaming from the tower, nor paused until she reached the town, where instantly, with a prudence and foresight beyond her years, she went to seek the curé. Great was the excitement among the peasantry on the estate when they heard of the death of the Count de St. Remy, and they assembled in great numbers around the old tower, and bore away the body to the chapel of the château. But the hard-hearted _fermier-général_, well aware that his possession of the estate was illegal—for the count had not the power to dispose of the land, which belonged of right to his children after him—refused to receive the corpse, and it remained for two whole days outside the chapel-door, whence it was carried to the burying-ground of the village, where it was thrown without ceremony, still covered with the rags in which he had died, into the common fosse,—the curé having refused the prayers of the church to one who had died without its aid, consequently in a state of _impénitence finale_.