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“Well then, we’ve got ourselves an excellent arrangement,” said Durand. “Wouldn’t you say, darling?”

Madame Durand, extremely pale and extremely sad always, looked up at her husband and answered:

“Let your will be done.”

Eleven o’clock struck. It was time to go. The Palais registrar got up and took his leave of his new friends, effusively thanking them for the dinner and expressing his pleasure at getting to know them. Citizen Durand led his guest to the door, then returned to the room.

“Go, Geneviève, go to bed.”

The young woman stood up without a word, picked up a lamp, and went into the room on the right. Durand, or rather Dixmer, watched her go, standing lost in thought for an instant with a black scowl on his face after her departure, then he took himself off to his room, which was on the opposite side.

42

THE TWO NOTES

From then on, the clerk from the War Ministry went to work assiduously every evening in the office of his colleague from the Palais. Madame Durand recorded their activity concerning removal of the nuts and bolts on registers prepared in advance, which Durand copied zealously.

Durand examined everything without appearing to notice anything. He had noted that every evening at nine o’clock a basket of provisions was brought by Richard or his wife and dropped at the door. When the registrar took leave of the gendarme with an “I’m off then, citizen,” the gendarme, either Gilbert or Duchesne, would come out, grab the basket, and take it to Marie Antoinette.

During the three consecutive nights Durand had remained tinkering later than usual, the basket also remained later in its place, since it was only on opening the door to say good-bye to the registrar that the gendarme would take hold of the provisions.

A quarter of an hour after introducing the new full basket, one of the two gendames would put the empty basket of the day before at the door, in the same place as the other one had been.

The evening of the fourth day—it was the beginning of October—after the usual session, when the Palais registrar had retired and when Durand, or rather Dixmer, had stayed behind with his wife, he let his quill drop and stooped to pick it up, looking around and listening as intently as if his life depended upon it. He then swiftly got to his feet and dashed to the door of the wicket, where he took up the napkin covering the basket and drove a tiny silver case into the soft bread loaf destined for the royal prisoner.

Then, pale and trembling from the emotion that even a man with the most powerful nervous system is rocked by when he has just accomplished some supreme act long prepared and strongly longed for, he went back to his place with one hand on his forehead, the other on his heart.

Geneviève watched him all the while, but without saying a word. Ever since he had taken her from Maurice’s place, she always waited for him to speak first. But this time it was she who broke the silence.

“Is it for tonight?” she asked.

“No, tomorrow night,” Dixmer answered crisply.

He looked and listened once more, closed the books, and knocked on the gendarme’s door.

“Huh?” said Gilbert.

“Citizen,” he said, “I’m off.”

“All right,” called the gendarme from the back of the cell. “Good night.”

“Good night, citizen Gilbert.”

Durand heard the grinding of the keys in the locks, realized the gendarme was about to open the door, and took off. In the corridor that led from the apartment of old man Richard to the courtyard, he bumped into a clerk coiffed with a fur cap and brandishing a heavy bunch of keys. Fear seized Dixmer; this man, brutal like all men of his station, was about to say something to him, was peering at him, was perhaps about to recognize him. He shoved his hat down, while Geneviève pulled the trimmings of her black mantle over her eyes.

Dixmer was wrong.

“Sorry!” was all the clerk said, even though he was the one that had been knocked into.

Dixmer gave a start at the sound of the man’s voice,