An American broke it with his walking stick to make sure that it was genuine." The ladies leaned forward, and the flickering light illumined their pale faces, expressive of mingled fright and compassion.

Especially noticeable was the pitiful, pain-fraught look which appeared on the countenance of the daughter, so full of life with her red lips and large black eyes.
Then all relapsed into gloom, and the little candles were borne aloft and went their way through the heavy darkness of the galleries.

The visit lasted another hour, for the Trappist did not spare a detail, fond as he was of certain nooks and corners, and as zealous as if he desired to work the redemption of his visitors.
While Pierre followed the others, a complete evolution took place within him.

As he looked about him, and formed a more and more complete idea of his surroundings, his first stupefaction at finding the reality so different from the embellished accounts of story-tellers and poets, his disillusion at being plunged into such rudely excavated mole-burrows, gave way to fraternal emotion.

It was not that he thought of the fifteen hundred martyrs whose sacred bones had rested there.