noon
Indeed , he had made a beautiful cage for them out of wood and wire , with little pasteboard mangers -LRB- which they nibbled away -RRB- . Well , the men of the party and young Laferté and I would go off with the dogs and keepers into the forest -- and Barty would pick filberts and fruit with Jeanne and Marie , and eat them with bread-and-butter and jam and _ cernaux _ -LRB- unripe walnuts mixed with salt and water and verjuice -- quite the nicest thing in the world -RRB- . Then he would find his way into the heart of the forest , which he loved -- and where he had scraped up a warm friendship with some charcoal-burners , whose huts were near an old yellow-watered pond , very brackish and stagnant and deep , and full of leeches and water-spiders . It was in the densest part of the forest , where the trees were so tall and leafy that the sun never fell on it , even at noon . The charcoal-burners told him that in '93 a young de la Tremblaye was taken there at sunset to be hanged on a giant oak-tree -- but he talked so agreeably and was so pleasant all round that they relented , and sent for bread and wine and cider and made a night of it , and did n't hang him till dawn next day ; after which they tied a stone to his ankles and dropped him into the pond , which was called `` the pond of the respite '' ever since ; and his young wife , Claire Élisabeth , drowned herself there the week after , and their bones lie at the bottom to this very day . And , ghastly to relate , the ringleader in this horrible tragedy was a beautiful young woman , a daughter of the people , it seems -- one Séraphine Doucet , whom the young viscount had betrayed before marriage -- le droit du seigneur ! -- and but for whom he would have been let off after that festive night .