wives.'

I did not wait to reason nor to ask myself if I did well; and my son has
told me since that he scarcely was more thankful for our great
deliverance than, just when the crowd of gaunt and weary men returned
into Semur, and there was a moment when excitement and joy were at their
highest, and danger possible, to hear the roll of the heavy farm
waggons, and to see me arrive, with all the little ones and their
mothers, like a new army, to take possession of their homes once more.


M. LE MAIRE CONCLUDES HIS RECORD.

The narratives which I have collected from the different eye-witnesses
during the time of my own absence, will show how everything passed while
I, with M. le Curé, was recovering possession of our city. Many have
reported to me verbally the occurrences of the last half-hour before my
return; and in their accounts there are naturally discrepancies, owing
to their different points of view and different ways of regarding the
subject. But all are agreed that a strange and universal slumber had
seized upon all. M. de Bois-Sombre even admits that he, too, was
overcome by this influence. They slept while we were performing our
dangerous and solemn duty in Semur. But when the Cathedral bells began
to ring, with one impulse all awoke; and starting from the places where
they lay, from the shade of the trees and bushes and sheltering hollows,
saw the cloud and the mist and the darkness which had enveloped Semur
suddenly rise from the walls. It floated up into the higher air before
their eyes, then was caught and carried away, and flung about into
shreds upon the sky by a strong wind, of which down below no influence
was felt. They all gazed, not able to get their breath, speechless,