These orders had reached Troyes that very morning.

Laurence went at once to the prison, though it was two in the morning, and obtained permission to stay with Michu, who was about to undergo the melancholy ceremony called "the toilet." The good abbe, who had asked permission to accompany him to the scaffold, had just given absolution to the man, whose only distress in dying was his uncertainty as to the fate of his young masters.

When Laurence entered his cell he uttered a cry of joy.
"I can die now," he said.
"They are pardoned," she said; "I do not know on what conditions, but they are pardoned.

I did all I could for you, dear friend--against the advice of others.

I thought I had saved you; but the Emperor deceived me with his graciousness." "It was written above," said Michu, "that the watch-dog should be killed on the spot where his old masters died." The last hour passed rapidly.