This, however, proved to be false, although his safety was not known until, after an absence of well-nigh five years, he presented himself once more in Paris. Here he happened to pass the church of S. Koch, the entire façade of which was heavily draped with black and shrouded for the funeral of some person of distinction. Upon enquiry, he learned that the mourning was on account of a young and beautiful lady who had died suddenly after two days’ illness, the wife of the President du Bourg, who before her marriage had been Mlle. Gabrielle de Launay. It appeared that, owing to the report of the death of Maurice de Serres, M. de Launay had compelled his daughter to marry this gentleman, who although nearly thirty years her senior was a figure of great wealth and importance. As may be imagined, the young captain was distracted with grief, but that night, taking a considerable sum in gold, he visited the sexton of the cemetery of S. Roch and with great difficulty bribed him to exhume the corpse of Madame du Bourg in order that he might once more look upon the features of the woman whom he had so passionately loved. With every precaution, under the pale light of a waning moon, the terrible task was completed, the coffin was silently unscrewed, and the unhappy lover threw himself upon his knees in an agony of grief. At last the grave-digger suggested that everything must be replaced in order, when with a terrible cry the young officer suddenly seized the cold, clay body and, before the bewildered sexton could prevent him, threading his rapid course among the tombs, with lightning speed he disappeared into the darkness. Pursuit was useless, and nothing remained but for the poor man to replace the empty shell in the grave, to shovel back the earth and arrange the spot so that there might be no trace of any disturbance. He felt sure, at least, that his accomplice in so terrible a crime, a sacrilege which would inevitably bring the severest punishment upon those concerned in it, must maintain silence, if only for his own sake.
Nearly five years had passed when M. du Bourg, who upon the anniversary of his wife’s death each June attended a solemn requiem, as he was passing through a somewhat unfrequented street in the suburbs of Paris came face to face with a lady in whom he recognised none other than the wife whose death he had mourned so tenderly and so long.
