M. de Joyeuse was kneeling between the dead, his palms joined before his breast, his rosary between them. The lights of the feast, that shone ghastly on the grim faces and on the blood-pool about them, shone also on his uplifted face, from which the last trace of the tremendous rages to which he was prone had fled, leaving it pale indeed and worn--for the marks of his illness were still upon it--but calm and sublime. His eyes were upward bent. Those eyes that a few minutes earlier had burned with a hatred almost sub-human now shone with a light soft and ecstatic, such as shines in the eyes of those who see visions and hear voices. His lips moved without sound. The beads dropped one by one through his fingers. * * * * * The hewers of wood and feeders of oxen who herded together in the town under the castle walls were timidly aware of the festivities above their heads. The sounds of brawling and dancing, of the tambour and glee, descended to them and kept them waiting far into the night. On occasions, rare, it is true, the war-lords above had broken loose from their bonds, and, mad with drink and frenzied with excitement, had harried their own town. Once, to teach a lesson, the thing had been done--but more completely and cruelly--by Vlaye's express order. The memory of these occasions remained, burned shamefully into the towns-folk's mind; and many a cotter looked up this night in trembling from his humble window, many a woman with her hood about her head stood in the alley whispering to her neighbour and quaked as she listened. Something beyond the ordinary was passing above, in the stronghold that at once protected and plundered them; something that a sad experience told them boded no good. Two or three young women of the better class went so far as to seek a sanctuary in Father Benet's chapel; while their fathers hid their little hoards, and their mothers took heed to quench the fires, and some threw water on the thatch--sad precautions which necessity had made second nature in many a hamlet and many a market-town of France. Had they known, these poor folk who paid for all, that their lord lay dead in the lighted room above, had they guessed that the hand which had held those turbulent troopers in order was nerveless at last, never again to instil fear or strike a blow, not even these precautions had contented them. They would have risen and fled, and in the marshes by the river or in remote meadows would have hidden themselves from the first violence of the troopers' outbreak. But they did not know, and they remained. And though those who were most fearful or least sleepy, women or men, noted that the lights above burned all night and that the tumult, albeit its note changed, held till dawn, they slept or kept vigil in security. The Duke's command availed. And no man, until the day was broad, left the castle.