“My children, let us pray; let us pray to the most high God, that he will keep our sweet sister Marguerite in innocence and honor, and give her back to us in happiness and peace. Let us pray!” And every voice responded of all who heard his words; every voice, save one, responded, “Let us pray!” and every knee was bent as they bowed them in a sorrowing circle around their monitor and friend--every knee, save that of Maurice Champrèst; but he stood erect, and pulled his hat over his brows, and folded his arms across his chest, and exclaimed, as the ravishers of his sweet wife wound through the dale into the larger valley: “Earth has no justice, Heaven no pity! Man has no honor, God no vengeance!” But on rode the tyrants, onward--careless of the ruin they had wrought, ruthless toward the innocence they had determined to destroy; confident in the puissance of their prowess, and almost defying the thunders of Heaven, which were even then rolling and muttering far away among the volcanic peaks of the Mont d’or. Were these the omens of a coming storm? They reached the esplanade before the castle-gates, and Marguerite was still unconscious. Happy had she nevermore regained her consciousness! But as the horses’ hoofs thundered over the echoing drawbridge, the clang roused her from her swoon. She raised herself up, drew her hand across her brow, as if to clear away some imaginary mist obscuring her mental vision, and gazed wildly and hurriedly around her on the strange objects which met her eyes, as if she had not as yet realized to herself her condition, nor altogether knew her destination. As she was carried, however, through the dim, resounding vault of the barbacan, and heard the grating clang of the portcullis when it thundered down behind her, a sense of her lost condition flashed upon her soul, and a voice seemed to whisper in her ear those words of horrible import which Danté, in after-days, inscribed upon the gates of hell; “On entering here, leave every hope behind!” Still she shrieked not, nor wept, nor craved or sympathy or pity; for too well did she know that the hearts of those to whom she should appeal were harder, colder than their own iron breastplates; her only confidence was in her own strenuous virtue, her only hope in Him who alone can save.