Belle Rose: A Romance of the Cloak and Sword — page 192: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

178 A CITY WON. as stars. At a hundred steps from the pavilion, the Sambre flowed likea stream of liquid silver, and nothing was to be heard but the soft noise of the water laving the foot of the willows. It seemed to the two brothers that the cries had come from the direction of the river. They were ad- vancing then in that direction, when a hoarse and breath- less cry passed above their heads and caused Madame de Chateaufort to bend likea tree beaten by the wind. A lugubrious silence followed it. Belle-Rose straightened himself up. “It is the cry of a drowning man,”’ said he, and he rushed toward the bank of the river. | Pierre reached the sand as quickly as he, and both of them searched along the river. They had not made fifty steps when they perceived, near an old willow, a black body floating softly with the current of the water. There were moments when this body came to the surface, and others when it disappeared under the branches of the willow. ‘‘Behold him?’’ said Pierre; “‘his hands are clasped around a branch.”’ It was in truth the dead body of a man clinging to the tree. Belle-Rose advanced to the trunk of the willow, while Pierre entered the stream; leaning over the dead body, they drew it from the water; but the inflexible fingers were glued to the branch, and it was necessary to cut it in order to push the body to the shore. Madame de Chateaufort was waiting on the bank of the Sambre; when the wet corpse was stretched out upon the grass, in the peaceable rays of the moon, she was the first to recognize it. ‘‘Monsieur de Villebrais!’’ said she. Belle-Rose threw himself on his knees near the dead man; it was indeed he; the face was livid, and his eyes seemed projecting from their sockets. The young officer let fall the head which he had raised for a moment. ‘The heart no longer beats,’’ said he. ‘‘May God have mercy upon his soul.”’ Monsieur de Villebrais, trusting to pass the Sambre at the ford, had been deceived; his horse, which had at first only sank up to its sides in the water, suddenly lost foot- ing; Monsieur de Villebrais wished to bring it back, but the current was strong and rapid at this place; the officer abandoned the animal and attempted to save himself by swimming. Perhaps he would have succeeded had not the horse in its struggles struck him in the head with its foot, Ol oe eGom Eboo i