I placed myself in the road and bade the leader of the procession pause. He stopped, staring stupidly at my dress. "What is here my good fellow? what crime hath he committed?" He, like the driver, answered carelessly: "None; she is a Huguenot." "_She_," I echoed, and stopped the bearers who laid their ghastly burden down, having little relish in the task. Yes, it was in very truth a woman. "For the sake of decency, comrade, why do you not cover her and give her Christian burial?" "It is the law," he replied stolidly. "Yes, yes, it is the law," eagerly assented the people who gathered about the corpse, not as friends, not as mourners, but as spectators of the horrid scene. Among them, unrebuked, were many white-faced children, half afraid and wholly curious. I looked at them all in disgust. They went their way and came to the outskirts of the village, where they contemptuously tossed the woman from the plank across a ditch into the open field. In spite of my loathing I had followed. I perceived now a feeble old woman hobble up toward the body and try with loud wailings to make her way through the guard which surrounded it. They shoved her back with their pikes, and finally one of them struck her for her persistence. "Pierre, look at her old mother; ah, Holy Virgin, what a stubborn lot are these heretics." Her mother! Great powers of heaven, could it be possible? My indignation blazed out against the inhuman guard. "Why do ye this most un-Christian thing?" and to the crowd: "Do you call yourselves men to stand by and witness this?" At my words one sturdy young fellow, of the better, peasant-farmer class, broke from those who held him and would have thrown himself unarmed against the mail-clad guard. Many strong arms kept him back. He struggled furiously for a while, then sank in the sheer desperation of exhaustion upon the road. As soon as he was quiet the mob, gathering about the more attractive spectacle, left him quite alone. I went up to him, laid my hand upon his shoulder, and spoke to him kindly. He looked up, surprised that one wearing a uniform should show him human sympathy. He had a good, honest face, blue-eyed and frank, yet such an expression of utter hopelessness as never marred a mortal countenance. It haunts me to this day. I was touched by the man's sullen apathy, succeeding so quickly to the desperate energy I had seen him display, and asked concerning his trouble. "Oh, God, Monsieur, my wife, Celeste, my young wife! Only a year married, Monsieur." He raised upon his elbow, taking my hand in both of his, "We tried to go; tried to reach England, America, anywhere but France; they brought us back, put us in prison; she died--died, Monsieur, of cruelty and exposure, then they cast her out like some unclean thing; she, so pure, so good. Only look, lying there. Holy Mother of Christ, look down upon her." He turned his gaze to where his wife lay and sprang up.