The priest was left alone with the lifeless body of M. de Chamondrin. He knelt, and, as calmly as if he were in his own presbytery, recited the prayers the church addresses to Heaven for the souls of the dead. The flickering light of a nearly consumed candle dimly illumined the room. The world without was bathed in a flood of clear moonlight. The marauders ran about the park, shouting at the top of their voices, uprooting plants and shrubbery, breaking the statuary and the marble vases, and expending upon inanimate objects the fury they were unable to vent upon the living. Suddenly, one of them discovered the summer-house. The door was open; he entered. Some of his comrades followed him. A priest with white, flowing locks rose at their entrance, and, pointing to the couch upon which the dead body of the Marquis was reposing, said: "Death has passed this way! Retire--" He was not allowed to complete his sentence. A violent blow from an axe felled him to the ground, his skull, fractured. They trampled his body under foot, then one of the assassins applied a burning torch to the floor. The flames rose, licking each portion of the building with their fiery tongues. Then the shameless crowd departed to continue their work of destruction. The sacking of the chateau occupied three hours. The pillagers had not retired when the approach of the National Guard of Remoulins, coming too late to the assistance of the Marquis, was discovered by one of the ruffians, and they fled in every direction to escape the punishment they merited. When Coursegol, wild with anxiety, reached the chateau on the day that followed this frightful scene, only the walls remained standing. Of the imposing edifice in which he was born there was left only bare and crumbling walls. The farm-house and the summer-house had shared the same fate; and in the park, thickly strewn with prostrate trees and debris, a crowd of gypsies and beggars were searching for valuables spared by the fire. Coursegol could not repress a cry of rage and despair at the sight; but how greatly his sorrow was augmented when he learned that two dead bodies, those of the Marquis and of the Abbe Peretty had been discovered half-consumed in the still smoking ruins. Were Philip and Antoinette also dead? No one knew. One person declared that he saw them making their escape. This uncertainty was more horrible to Coursegol than the poignant reality before his eyes. He flung himself down upon the seared turf, and there, gloomy, motionless, a prey to the most frightful despair, he wept bitterly. CHAPTER VI. PARIS IN 1792.