That's the whole of it." "You are worthy to be a noble," said Laurence, offering her hand to Michu, who tried to kneel and kiss it.

She saw his motion and prevented it, saying: "Stand up!" in a tone of voice and with a look which made him amends for all the scorn of the last twelve years.
"You reward me as though I had done all that remains for me to do," he said.

"But don't you hear them, those huzzars of the guillotine?
Let us go elsewhere." He took the mare's bridle, and led her a little distance.
"Think only of sitting firm," he said, "and of saving your head from the branches of the trees which might strike you in the face." Then he mounted his own horse and guided the young girl for half an hour at full gallop; making turns and half turns, and striking into wood-paths, so as to confuse their traces, until they reached a spot where he pulled up.
"I don't know where I am," said the countess looking about her,--"I, who know the forest as well as you do." "We are in the heart of it," he replied.

"Two gendarmes are after us, but we are quite safe." The picturesque spot to which the bailiff had guided Laurence was destined to be so fatal to the principal personages of this drama, and to Michu himself, that it becomes our duty, as an historian, to describe it.

The scene became, as we shall see hereafter, one of noted interest in the judiciary annals of the Empire.
The forest of Nodesme belonged to the monastery of Notre-Dame.