There was still a picture over the altar in the other little chapel to which he was taken, with the rest of that day's condemned, for his last night. A few mattresses, even, had been put in the sacristy, but most of the prisoners were of the mind of the old Breton gentleman, M. de Kergariou, and needed nothing save a light to pray by. Scattered about the chapel was a pathetic flotsam, the possessions of former occupants who also had spent here their last night on earth; and La Vireville, picking up a little book of prayers marked with the name of a boy of fourteen, Paul Le Vaillant de la Ferrière, a volunteer in du Dresnay, who had been wounded, like him, at Ste. Barbe, knew by it that, despite his extreme youth, he too had been sent to the slaughter. In this little place Fortuné lay down for his last living sleep. He had no desire to meet death with bravado; it was, he felt, more seemly to meet it with devotion, as so many had done, and were doing now. If he could not compass that he had been too long accustomed to the daily thought of it to fear it. Everything had ended for him on the morning when he broke his sword. He wished, it was true, that he could have left his mother in better circumstances, but before he quitted Jersey he had had the Prince de Bouillon's promise of a pension for her if he did not return. She would grieve for him, yes; but she would not have had him outlive his comrades. And she, too, would sleep soundly soon. Poor little Anne-Hilarion! For him he was really sorry. The child loved his father so much; he would find it hard to believe that he would never see him again. (For he was certain now that René de Flavigny, even if he had survived, had never reached safety.) And there had been no chance of fulfilling his own promise; escape had never even looked his way. . . . After all, Providence had been merciful to him, just where it had seemed most merciless. . . . He had no son, and therefore no anguish of farewell. And so, disturbed neither by thoughts of the morrow, by the low-voiced conversation of two friends near him, nor by the prayers of others, Fortuné de la Vireville slept soundly, as has happened to not a few in like circumstances. (3) He woke a little before four o'clock, and heard an old émigré, M. de Villavicencio, standing under one of the windows, read the prayers for the dying to two others, much younger. The old man was beginning the _Profisceretur_ when the tramp of feet was heard outside. The chapel door was opened, letting in the air of the early morning; soldiers stood there with packets of cords. Just for one moment there was silence, and, in it, the rapturous song of a thrush; then M. de Villavicencio finished the prayer.