He died as he had sworn he would die, without even changing color--calm
and proud, the name of Marie-Anne upon his lips.
CHAPTER XXXIII
Ah, well, there was one woman, a fair young girl, whose heart had not
been touched by the sorrowful scenes of which Montaignac had been the
theatre.
Mlle. Blanche de Courtornieu smiled as brightly as ever in the midst of
a stricken people; and surrounded by mourners, her lovely eyes remained
dry.
The daughter of a man who, for a week, exercised the power of a
dictator, she did not lift her finger to save a single one of the
condemned prisoners from the executioner.
They had stopped her carriage on the public road. This was a crime which
Mlle. de Courtornieu could never forget.
She also knew that she owed it to Marie-Anne's intercession that she had
not been held prisoner. This she could never forgive.
So it was with the bitterest resentment that, on the morning
following her arrival in Montaignac, she recounted what she styled her
"humiliations" to her father, i.e., the inconceivable arrogance of that
Lacheneur girl, and the frightful brutality of which the peasants had
been guilty.
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