Produced by David Widger and Pat Castevens
By Eugene Sue
XVII. The Ajoupa
XVIII. The Tattooing
XIX. The Smuggler
XX. M. Joshua Van Dael
XXI. The Ruins of Tchandi
XXII. The Ambuscade
XXIII. M. Rodin
XXIV. The Tempest
XXV. The Shipwreck
XXVI. The Departure for Paris
XXVII. Dagobert's Wife
XXVIII. The Sister of the Bacchanal Queen
XXIX. Agricola Baudoin
XXX. The Return
XXXI. Agricola and Mother Bunch
XXXII. The Awakening
XXXIII. The Pavilion
XXXIV. Adrienne at her Toilet
XXXV. The Interview
The site is wild and rugged. It is a lofty eminence covered with hugeboulders of sandstone, between which rise birch trees and oaks, theirfoliage already yellowed by autumn. These tall trees stand out from thebackground of red light, which the sun has left in the west, resemblingthe reflection of a great fire.
From this eminence the eye looks down into a deep valley, shady, fertile,and half-veiled in light vapor by the evening mist. The rich meadows, thetufts of bushy trees the fields from which the ripe corn has beengathered in, all blend together in one dark, uniform tint, whichcontrasts with the limpid azure of the heavens. Steeples of gray stone orslate lift their pointed spires, at intervals, from the midst of thisvalley; for many villages are spread about it, bordering a high-roadwhich leads from the north to the west.
It is the hour of repose—the hour when, for the most part, every cottagewindow brightens to the joyous crackling of the rustic hearth, and shinesafar through shade and foliage, whilst clouds of smoke issue from thechimneys, and curl up slowly towards the sky. But now, strange to say,every hearth in the country seems cold and deserted. Stranger and morefatal still, every steeple rings out a funeral knell. Whatever there isof activity, movement, or life, appears concentrated in that lugubriousand far-sounding vibration.
Lights begin to show themselves in the dark villages, but they rise notfrom the cheerful and pleasant rustic hearth. They are as red as thefires of the herdsmen, seen at night through the midst of the fog. Andthen these lights do not remain motionless. They creep slowly towards thechurchyard of every village. Louder sounds the death-knell, the airtrembles beneath the strokes of so many bells, and, at rare intervals,the funeral chant rises faintly to the summit of the hill.
Why so many interments? What valley of desolation is this, where thepeaceful songs which follow the hard labors of the day are replaced bythe death dirge? where the repose of evening is exchanged for the reposeof eternity? What is this valley of the shadow, where every villagemourns for its many dead, and buries them at the same hour of the samenight?
Alas! the deaths are so sudden and numerous and frightful that there ishardly time to bury the dead. During day the survivors are chained to theearth by hard but necessary toil; and only in the evening, when theyreturn from the fields, are they able, though sinking with fatigue, todig those other furrows, in which their brethren are to lie heaped likegrains of corn.
And this valley is not the only one that has seen the desolation. Duringa series of fatal years, many villages, many towns, many cities, many