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“Because your eyes are very red.”

“And you’re very pale, too,” Duchesne put in.

“Thank you, messieurs. No, I’m not ill; but I suffered a lot last night.”

“Oh, yes, with all your worries.”

“No, messieurs; my worries being always the same, and religion having taught me to lay them at the foot of the Cross, my worries don’t make me suffer more one day than any other. No, I’m ill because I didn’t sleep last night.”

“Ah! You’re not used to the new digs, the new bed,” said Duchesne.

“And then again, the lodgings aren’t the best,” added Gilbert.

“It’s not that either, messieurs,” said the Queen, shaking her head.

“Ugly or beautiful, where I live is a matter of indifference to me.”

“What is it, then?”

“What is it?”

“Yes.”

“Please forgive me for saying so, but I was most put out by the odor of the tobacco that monsieur is still exhaling as we speak.”

Indeed, Gilbert was smoking again; it was, when it came down to it, his most common occupation.

“Oh, my God!” he cried, quite troubled by how sweetly the Queen had spoken to him. “So that’s it! Why didn’t you say so, citizeness?”

“Because I didn’t think I had any right to disrupt your habits, monsieur.”

“All right, you won’t be inconvenienced any more, not by me at least,” said Gilbert, throwing away his pipe, which smashed on the tiles. “I won’t smoke again.”

With that he turned and closed the screen again, dragging his companion with him.

“It’s possible they’ll cut her head off—that’s the nation’s business; but why make that woman suffer any more than she has to? We’re soldiers, not torturers like bloody Simon.”

“It’s all a bit aristocratic, what you’re doing there, mate,” said Duchesne, shaking his head.

“What do you call aristocratic? Go on, tell me.”

“I call aristocratic anything that vexes the nation and pleases our enemies.”

“So in your books,” said brave Gilbert, “I’m vexing the nation because I don’t continue to smoke out the Widow Capet? Come off it! You see, me, I remember my oath to the nation and the orders of my brigadier, that’s all. Now, I know my orders by heart: ‘Do not let the prisoner escape, do not let anyone in to see her, remove any correspondence she tries to write or maintain, and die at your post.’ That’s what I promised to do and I’ll keep my promise. Long live the nation!”

“All I’ve got to say to that is that it’s not that I hold it against you—on the contrary; but it hurts me to see you compromise yourself.”

“Quiet! Here comes someone.”

The Queen hadn’t missed a word of this conversation, even though the men had kept their voices down. Captivity certainly sharpens your senses. The noise that had attracted the attention of the two guards was that of feet approaching the door. It opened. Two municipal officers barged in, followed by the concierge and a host of clerks.

“Well, then,” they asked, “what about the prisoner?”

“She’s in there,” the two gendarmes chimed.

“How is she lodged?”

“Have a look.”

Gilbert pulled back the screen.

“What do you want?” asked the Queen.

“The Commune’s come to visit, citizeness Capet.”

“This man is a good man,” Marie Antoinette thought to herself, “and if my friends really want to …”

“All right, all right,” said the municipal officers, pushing Gilbert to one side and entering the Queen’s room. “You don’t have to make such a song and dance about it.”

The Queen did not look up, and you would have been forgiven for thinking, at her impassiveness, that she had neither seen nor heard what had just occurred, imagining herself to still be alone.

The Commune delegates sniffed around every inch of the room with shameless curiosity, tapped the woodwork, the bed, the bars on the window that opened onto the Women’s Courtyard, and then, after recommending the greatest vigilance to the guards, left without having addressed a single word to Marie Antoinette and without the latter appearing to have been remotely aware of their presence.

35

THE HALL OF LOST FOOTSTEPS

Toward the close of that same day that saw the commissioners inspect the Queen’s cell with such minute attention, a man dressed in a grey