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“Well, then; are you ready, madame?” asked Dixmer.

“Already!” murmured Geneviève.

“Oh, take your time, madame!” replied Dixmer. “I’m in no hurry! Besides, Maurice probably won’t be long getting back, and I’d be delighted to thank him for the hospitality he has shown you.”

Geneviève gave a lurch of terror at the idea that her lover and her husband might meet. She shot up as though on a spring.

“It’s over, monsieur,” she said. “I’m ready.”

Dixmer went out first; Geneviève followed him on unsteady legs, her eyes half shut, her head thrown back. They climbed into a fiacre that was waiting at the door and the car rolled away.

As Geneviève had said, it was over.

40

THE PUITS-DE-NOÉ BY NIGHT

The man dressed in a carmagnole whom we saw striding up and down the Hall of Lost Footsteps, and whom we heard exchanging a few words with the wicket clerk who had remained behind on guard duty at the mouth of the tunnel during the expedition of Giraud the architect, General Santerre, and old man Richard; this patriot enragé, with his furry bear-cub cap and thick mustache, who had tried to put himself over on Simon as having paraded the head of the Princesse de Lamballe, found himself the day after that night full of varied emotions at the Puits-de-Noé cabaret at around seven o’clock in the evening. The cabaret, as you’ll recall, was on the corner of the rue de la Vieille-Draperie.

He was there at the house of the liquor licensee—who, in this case, was a woman—sitting at the back of a room made sooty and smoky by tobacco and candles, pretending to devour a dish of fish in black butter sauce.

The room he was eating in was just about deserted; only two or three regulars had stayed behind, enjoying the privilege their daily visit to the establishment gave them. Most of the tables were empty; but it must be said in honor of the Puits-de-Noé that the tablecloths, which were red going on purplish blue, revealed the passage of a gratifying number of satisfied customers.

The last three customers filed out one after the other, and at around a quarter to eight the patriot found himself on his own. At that point he pushed away, with the most aristocratic disgust, the coarse dish he had appeared to be so greatly relishing just a moment before and pulled from his pocket a bar of Spanish chocolate, which he consumed slowly and with a very different expression from the one we have tried to lend his physiognomy.

From time to time, as he continued munching his Spanish chocolate together with his black bread, he glanced anxiously and impatiently at the glass door, which was covered with a red and white checked curtain. At times he pricked up his ears, interrupting his frugal meal so absentmindedly that the mistress of the house, seated at her counter quite close to the door on which the patriot’s gaze was riveted, began to think, without too much vanity, that she was the object of his interest.

At last the doorbell rang, and so loudly as to give our man quite a jolt. He went back to his fish without the mistress of the house noticing that he threw half of it to a poor skinny dog that had been staring at him with its tongue hanging out and the other half to a cat who aimed a delicate but deadly paw at the dog.

The door with the red and white checked curtain opened and a man came in dressed more or less like the patriot with the exception of the fur cap, for which he had substituted the ubiquitous red cap. An enormous bunch of keys hung from the man’s belt, as did a large infantry sword with a copper scabbard.

“My soup! My booze!” the man called out, stepping into the common room without touching his red cap or doing more than giving a nod to the mistress of the establishment. Then, with a sigh of weariness, he plopped down at the table next to the one where our patriot was having his supper.

In deference to the priority she gave the newcomer, the mistress of the house got up and placed the order herself.

The two men turned their backs to each other, one of them looking out into the street,