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There was a decision in her tones which caused Victor to experience a chill not devoid of dread. If only he could read the face behind the mask! Anne followed Maître le Borgne upstairs. Victor and madame were alone. He waited patiently for her to speak. She devoted some moments absently to crushing with her boot the stray pieces of charred wood which littered the broad hearthstone.
This, of course, happened every time we "came in." The land where these trenches lay was a vast and lugubrious expanse of mud, with here and there a charred and ragged building. On our right lay the River Douve, and, on our left, the trenches turned a corner back inwards again. In front lay the long line of the Messines ridge.
The field of trampled clover looked as if a windstorm had swept over it, strewing the contents of a dozen dismantled houses. There were stacks of arms and piles of cooking utensils, knapsacks, half emptied, lay beside the charred remains of fires, and loose fence rails showed red and white glimpses of playing cards, hidden, before the fight, by superstitious soldiers.
Thus he stood in mingled triumph and agitation, his heart beating fast, every nerve on edge. "Who who's there?" he said. He moved again, and was startled as his foot slipped off the charred timber on which he was walking. The brisk autumn wind was playing havoc among the debris, blowing damp pages over faster than anyone could turn them.
Here and there a charred stump, the relic of some conflagration, reared its blackened face, serving to keep us in the direction we had taken at starting, which was over a rich alluvial soil, that seemed to hold out a promise of a future brilliant destiny to this part of the continent.
Oh, if the strength of that horse of Thomas Bolle's had failed one short five minutes sooner, she, in whom the red blood still ran so healthily, would have been but a handful of charred bones. Or if her faith had left her so that she had yielded to the Abbot and shortened all his talk at the place of burning, then Bolle would have come too late.
I wrote twice, with charred wood, on the half of a handkerchief, and threw it out of the window, but no good came of this; I suppose the sentries were too vigilant. A turnkey took one of my guineas, promising to let my aunt hear of me. I saw him no more.
He then pulled out a bottle from under his cloak, and drank a dram; and taking the body under one arm, all dressed as it was, and the head in his other hand, the eyes still bandaged, he threw both upon the faggots, which his assistant lighted. "The next day," says Madame de Sevigne, "people were looking for the charred bones of Madame de Brinvilliers, because they said she was a saint."
The charred sticks that you find in an old fireplace are absolutely incombustible. Do not trust the handful of withered twigs and branches that you gather from the spruce-trees. They seem dry, but they are little better for your purpose than so much asbestos. You make a pile of them in some apparently suitable hollow, and lay a few larger sticks on top.
He shivered a little as he stood up and walked across the room, and poking the charred logs into a flame; and, setting on more wood, he made the walls spring into yellow flashes, between which Vesta saw her forefathers dart cold glances at her, in their gilt frames yet how helpless they were, with all their respectability, to take her body or her father's honor out of pawn! and she felt for the first time the hollowness of family power, except in the ever-preserved mail of a solvent posterity.
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