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“Let’s see,” he murmured, pausing. “Did I get my measurements right? Will I be strong enough? Will she have enough courage? Oh, yes! I know how courageous she can be, I’ve seen it. Oh, God! When I take her hand, when I say to her: ‘Madame, you are saved!’ …”

He stopped dead as though crushed by the weight of such a hope.

“Oh!” he went on, “what a reckless, insane plan! That’s what others would say as they burrowed under the covers or contented themselves with hanging around the Conciergerie dressed as lackeys. But that’s because they don’t have what it takes for such daring—and I do: it’s not just the Queen in her I want to save, it’s the woman.… So, to work! Let’s go over it one more time. Taking up the flagstone is a piece of cake; leaving it open, a gaping hole—there’s the danger, for a round could turn up.… But they never have rounds patrolling at night. No one suspects anything, for I have no accomplices, and then again, how much time do you need to run down a dark corridor when you feel as passionately as I do? I’ll be underneath her room in three minutes; in five minutes, I’ll take up the stone that serves as the hearthstone in the fireplace. She’ll hear me at work, but she has so much courage and composure, she won’t be afraid! On the contrary, she’ll know it’s her liberator coming.… She is guarded by two men; no doubt these two will come running.… Well, what are two men, after all?” said the patriot with a gloomy smile, glancing from the weapon he held in his hand to the one dangling at his waist. “Two men means two bullets—or two wallops of the iron bar. Poor blighters! … But plenty of others have died—men no more guilty than they are. Let’s go!”

With that, citizen Théodore resolutely applied his pliers to the join between the two flagstones.

At that very instant, a bright light slid like a streak of molten gold across the flagstones and a noise ricocheting around the echoing vaults made the conspirator’s head whip around; in a single bound, he was crouching down again in the scribe’s stall.

Voices, made faint by distance and by the emotions that all men feel at night in a cavernous building, soon reached Théodore’s ears. He hunkered down further and peered through a slit; first he saw a man in military garb whose huge sword, ringing on the flagstones, was one of the noises that had first caught his attention. Then came a man in a pistachio green suit, holding a ruler in his hand and rolls of paper under his arm; then a third man, in a big ratiné jacket and fur cap; then, finally, a fourth man, wearing a carmagnole and sabots1 on his feet.

The Haberdashers’ Gate screeched on its noisy hinges and slammed against the iron chain that held the gate open in the day.

The four men entered.

“A round,” Théodore murmured. “Praise be to God! Ten minutes later and I’d have been a goner.”

Focusing intently, he tried to work out who the men were who thus composed the round. Indeed, he recognized three of them. The one in the lead, dressed as a general, was Santerre; the man in the ratiné jacket and fur cap was Richard, the concierge; the man with the carmagnole and clogs was probably the wicket clerk.

But he had never before seen the man decked out in pistachio green with a ruler in hand and scrolls under his arm. Who could this man be, and what were the general of the Commune, the warden of the Conciergerie, a wicket clerk, and this unknown man doing together at ten o’clock at night in the Hall of Lost Footsteps?

Citizen Théodore leaned on one knee, holding his pistol cocked with one hand and with the other arranging his cap on his hair, which in his haste he had messed up much too much for the wig to look natural.

Until then the four nocturnal visitors had remained silent, or at least the words they had spoken had not reached the ears of the conspirator other than as ambient noise. But suddenly Santerre spoke, only ten feet away from his cubbyhole, and the general’s voice reached citizen Théodore distinctly.

“Let’s see,” said Santerre, “we’re in the Hall of Lost Footsteps now. It’s up to you to guide us after