singular house. Do you see those window-frames painted red, and the
red lines on the doors and shutters? Doesn't the place look to you as

if it belonged to the devil?--perhaps he inherited it from the monks.
Come, let us pursue the black and white lady--forward, march!" cried

Philippe, with forced gaiety.
At that instant the two huntsmen heard a cry that was something like

that of a mouse caught in a trap. They listened. The rustle of a few
shrubs sounded in the silence like the murmur of a breaking wave. In

vain they listened for other sounds; the earth was dumb, and kept the
secret of those light steps, if, indeed, the unknown woman moved at

all.
"It is very singular!" said Philippe, as they skirted the park wall.

The two friends presently reached a path in the forest which led to
the village of Chauvry. After following this path some way toward the

main road to Paris, they came to another iron gate which led to the
principal facade of the mysteriousdwelling. On this side the

dilapidation and disorder of the premises had reached their height.
Immense cracks furrowed the walls of the house, which was built on

three sides of a square. Fragments of tiles and slates lying on the
ground, and the dilapidated condition of the roofs, were evidence of a

total want of care on the part of the owners. The fruit had fallen
from the trees and lay rotting on the ground; a cow was feeding on the

lawn and treading down the flowers in the borders, while a goat
browsed on the shoots of the vines and munched the unripe grapes.

"Here all is harmony; the devastation seems organized," said the
colonel, pulling the chain of a bell; but the bell was without a

clapper.
The huntsmen heard nothing but the curiously sharp noise of a rusty

spring. Though very dilapidated, a little door made in the wall beside
the iron gates resisted all their efforts to open it.

"Well, well, this is getting to be exciting," said de Sucy to his
companion.

"If I were not a magistrate," replied Monsieur d'Albon, "I should
think that woman was a witch."

As he said the words, the cow came to the iron gate and pushed her
warm muzzle towards them, as if she felt the need of seeing human

beings. Then a woman, if that name could be applied to the indefinable
being who suddenly issued from a clump of bushes, pulled away the cow

by its rope. This woman wore on her head a red handkerchief, beneath
which trailed long locks of hair in color and shape like the flax on a

distaff. She wore no fichu. A coarse woollen petticoat in black and
gray stripes, too short by several inches, exposed her legs. She might

have belonged to some tribe of Red-Skins described by Cooper, for her
legs, neck, and arms were the color of brick. No ray of intelligence

enlivened her vacant face. A few whitish hairs served her for
eyebrows; the eyes themselves, of a dull blue, were cold and wan; and

her mouth was so formed as to show the teeth, which were crooked, but
as white as those of a dog.

"Here, my good woman!" called Monsieur de Sucy.
She came very slowly to the gate, looking with a silly expression at

the two huntsmen, the sight of whom brought a forced and painful smile
to her face.

"Where are we? Whose house is this? Who are you? Do you belong here?"
To these questions and several others which the two friends

alternately addressed to her, she answered only with guttural sounds
that seemed more like the growl of an animal than the voice of a human

being.
"She must be deaf and dumb," said the marquis.

"Bons-Hommes!" cried the peasant woman.
"Ah! I see. This is, no doubt, the old monastery of the Bons-Hommes,"

said the marquis.
He renewed his questions. But, like a capricious child, the peasant

woman colored, played with her wooden shoe, twisted the rope of the
cow, which was now feeding peaceably, and looked at the two hunters,

examining every part of their clothing; then she yelped, growled, and
clucked, but did not speak.

"What is your name?" said Philippe, looking at her fixedly, as if he
meant to mesmerize her.

"Genevieve," she said, laughing with a silly air.
"The cow is the most intelligent being we have seen so far," said the

marquis. "I shall fire my gun and see if that will being some one."
Just as d'Albon raised his gun, the colonel stopped him with a

gesture, and pointed to the form of a woman, probably the one who had
so keenly piqued his curiosity. At this moment she seemed lost in the

deepest meditation, and was coming with slow steps along a distant
pathway, so that the two friends had ample time to examine her.

She was dressed in a ragged gown of black satin. Her long hair fell in
masses of curls over her forehead, around her shoulders, and below her

waist, serving her for a shawl. Accustomed no doubt to this disorder,
she seldom pushed her hair from her forehead; and when she did so, it

was with a sudden toss of her head which only for a moment cleared her
forehead and eyes from the thick veil. Her gesture, like that of an

animal, had a remarkablemechanicalprecision, the quickness of which
seemed wonderful in a woman. The huntsmen were amazed to see her

suddenly leap up on the branch of an apple-tree, and sit there with
the ease of a bird. She gathered an apple and ate it; then she dropped

to the ground with the graceful ease we admire in a squirrel. Her
limbs possessed an elasticity which took from every movement the

slightest appearance of effort or constraint. She played upon the
turf, rolling herself about like a child; then, suddenly, she flung

her feet and hands forward, and lay at full length on the grass, with
the grace and natural ease of a young cat asleep in the sun. Thunder

sounded in the distance, and she turned suddenly, rising on her hands
and knees with the rapidity of a dog which hears a coming footstep.

The effects of this singular attitude was to separate into two heavy
masses the volume of her black hair, which now fell on either side of

her head, and allowed the two spectators to admire the white shoulders
glistening like daisies in a field, and the throat, the perfection of

which allowed them to judge of the other beauties of her figure.
Suddenly she uttered a distressful cry and rose to her feet. Her

movements succeeded each other with such airiness and grace that she
seemed not a creature of this world but a daughter of the atmosphere,

as sung in the poems of Ossian. She ran toward a piece of water, shook
one of her legs lightly to cast off her shoe, and began to dabble her

foot, white as alabaster, in the current, admiring, perhaps, the
undulations she thus produced upon the surface of the water. Then she

knelt down at the edge of the stream and amused herself, like a child,
in casting in her long tresses and pulling them abruptly out, to watch

the shower of drops that glittered down, looking, as the sunlight
struck athwart them, like a chaplet of pearls.

"That woman is mad!" cried the marquis.
A hoarse cry, uttered by Genevieve, seemed uttered as a warning to the

unknown woman, who turned suddenly, throwing back her hair from either
side of her face. At this instant the colonel and Monsieur d'Albon

could distinctly see her features; she, herself, perceiving the two
friends, sprang to the iron railing with the lightness and rapidity of

a deer.
"Adieu!" she said, in a soft, harmonious voice, the melody of which

did not convey the slightest feeling or the slightest thought.
Monsieur d'Albon admired the long lashes of her eyelids, the blackness

of her eyebrows, and the dazzling whiteness of a skin devoid of even
the faintest tinge of color. Tiny blue veins alone broke the

uniformity of its pure white tones. When the marquis turned to his
friend as if to share with him his amazement at the sight of this

singular creature, he found him stretched on the ground as if dead.
D'Albon fired his gun in the air to summonassistance, crying out

"Help! help!" and then endeavored to revive the colonel. At the sound
of the shot, the unknown woman, who had hitherto" target="_blank" title="ad.至今，迄今">hitherto stood motionless,

fled away with the rapidity of an arrow, uttering cries of fear like a
wounded animal, and runninghither and thither about the meadow with

every sign of the greatest terror.