With that, Claire took Nanon's hand, and side by side, stepping so lightly that they scarcely bent the blades of grass beneath their feet, they walked to the clump of yew-trees behind which the church was hidden. The viscountess led Nanon to a chapel, in the centre of which a simple stone stood up some four inches above the ground; a cross was carved upon the stone. The viscountess pointed to it without speaking. Nanon knelt and kissed the cold marble. Claire leaned against the altar, kissing the lock of hair. The one was trying to accustom herself to the thought of death, the other to dream for the last time of life. A quarter of an hour after, the two women returned together to the house. Except to pray, they had not for an instant broken their woebegone silence. "Madame," said the viscountess, "from this hour you have your cell in this convent; would you like the one adjoining mine?--we shall be separated less." "I thank you very humbly, madame," said Nanon, "for the offer, and I gratefully accept it. But before I leave the world forever let me say farewell for the last time to my brother, who is waiting at the gate; he also is overcome with sorrow." "Alas!" said Claire, to whose mind the thought came instinctively that Cauvignac's safety caused the death of his companion in captivity; "go, my sister." Nanon left the room. II. THE BROTHER AND SISTER. As Nanon said, Cauvignac was waiting, sitting upon a stone a few steps from his horse, at whom he was gazing sadly, while the horse himself browsing upon the dry grass so far as the length of his rein permitted, raised his head from time to time to gaze intelligently into his master's face. Before the adventurer was the dusty road, which, as it passed out of sight a short distance away among the elms which covered a slight elevation, seemed to start from the convent to lose itself in space. One might have said, and it may have occurred to the adventurer, although his mind was little given to philosophical turns of thought, that over yonder was the world, and that its tumult died at that cross-surmounted iron gate. In fact, Cauvignac had arrived at that stage of introspection when we might fairly expect him to have thought upon such subjects. But he had already forgotten himself in this sentimental reverie over long for a man of his character. He appealed therefore to his consciousness of what his manly dignity required of him, and, ashamed of having been so weak, said to himself:-- "What! should not I, who am so superior in mind to all these men of courage, be at least their equal in courage, or rather in lack of courage? Damnation! Richon is dead, beyond question; Canolles is dead, that is equally true; but I am still alive, and after all, that, it seems to me, is the principal thing.