How I got down to them, shaken as I was by the agony of that discovery, I know not. I remember only the tempest of wild rage which burst within me as I looked down at those mutilated figures. And I held my clenched hands above my head and swore, as there was a God in heaven, that I would have vengeance on the devil who had done this thing. He should pay for it--he should pay to the uttermost, drop by drop. I vowed myself to the task. By my father’s memory, by my mother’s honor, by my hope of heaven, I swore that for me there should be no rest, no happiness, no contentment, until I had pulled this monster down and sent his soul to the torture which awaited it. For an instant the mad thought seized me to set off at once on the trail of the murderers, to harry them, cleave them asunder, seize the fiend who had set them on and wring his life out. A superhuman strength possessed me, a divine ardor of vengeance; and not for an instant did I doubt that God would nerve my arm to accomplish all this. But suddenly I remembered that another duty had been laid upon me. I must discharge that first; I must go on to the Bocage. Then I could turn back to Dange. I grew calmer after a time; that divine rage passed and left me weak and shaken. I sat limply down upon a nearby stone and gazed at those desecrated bodies, with hot tears starting from my eyes at thought of the gallant man and fair woman for whom this hideous fate had been reserved. In that moment of anguish there was but one comforting reflection--she had died with her husband’s arms about her, his voice in her ears, his kisses on her lips. Yet, deserted, insentient as they were, I could not leave these bodies here to rot in the sun, food for carrion birds and unclean beasts of the night. Nor could I spare the time to bury them, for the sun was already sinking toward the horizon. I glanced despairingly about me--then I saw the way. Twenty feet above the bed of the stream some tremendous freshet had eaten into the bank and so undermined it that it seemed to hang tottering in the air. In a moment I had carried the bodies, one by one, into the shadow of this bank and laid them tenderly side by side. Then I hesitated--but only for an instant. I went straight to the spot where Pasdeloup lay, and half dragging, half carrying, placed him at last beside his master, where he surely had the right to lie--where I was certain he would have wished to lie.