A hundred guns fired at once.
When the smoke disappeared, the escort had disappeared too. Seven of the horsemen had fallen, five had fled. The peasants ran to the wagon.
"Hold on," cried the chief; "it is not the guillotine. It is a ladder."
The wagon, indeed, had for its sole burden a long ladder.
The two horses had fallen, wounded; the driver had been killed, but not purposely.
"It's all the same," said the chief, "a ladder with an escort is suspicious. It was going toward Parigné. It was for scaling la Tourgue, most certainly."
"Let us burn the ladder," cried the peasants.
As for the funereal wagon, which they were looking for, It took another road and was already two leagues away, in the village where Michelle Fléchard saw it passing along at sunrise.
CHAPTER V.
VOX IN DESSERTO.
After leaving the three children to whom she gave her bread, Michelle Fléchard began to rove at random through the wood.
Since no one would show her the way, she must find it for herself. Every few moments she would sit down, then she would get up, and then sit down again. She felt that dismal weariness, which first affects the muscles and then passes to the bones, a slavish weariness. She was a slave in reality,—a slave to her lost children. She must find them; every lost instant might be their distraction; whoever has such a duty has no rights; she was forbidden to pause, even for breath. But she was very weary. In such a state of exhaustion, the possibility of one step more is a question. Could it be done? She had been walking since morning. She had seen no village, not even a house. At first she took the right path, then the wrong one, and finally she lost her way
