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Geneviève shivered as she touched her husband’s hand with her fingertips.

“Stay close to me, madame,” said Dixmer. “And as soon as I’ve struck Gilbert, go in.”

“I’m ready.”

Dixmer then gripped his enormous dagger in his right hand and, with his left, knocked on the door.

44

THE PREPARATIONS OF THE KNIGHT OF MAISON-ROUGE

While the scene just described was taking place at the door of the Queen’s prison cell, or rather of the outer section occupied by the two gendarmes, other preparations were forging ahead on the opposite side of the cell, out in the Women’s Courtyard.

A man suddenly emerged like a statue made of stone that had broken away from the wall. This man was followed by two dogs, and while humming the “Ça ira,” a song very much in vogue at the time, he had scraped the five iron bars that secured the Queen’s window with the bunch of keys he held in his hand.

At first the Queen had jumped; but, recognizing the event as a signal, she had immediately opened her window quietly and got down to the task at hand with a surer method than anyone would have imagined, for more than once, in the locksmith’s workshop where her royal spouse used to spend a good part of every day amusing himself, her dainty fingers had handled tools similar to the one on which all her hopes of salvation now rested.

As soon as the man with the bunch of keys heard the Queen’s window opening, he knocked on the wardens’ window.

“Ah! Ah!” said Gilbert, looking through the glass pane. “It’s citizen Mardoche.”

“The man himself,” replied the wicket clerk. “Well then, looks like we’re going about our business, keeping watch?”

“As usual, citizen turnkey. It seems to me you don’t often catch us lying down on the job.”

“Ah!” said Mardoche. “It’s just that tonight vigilance is more necessary than ever.”

“Bah!” said Duchesne, who had come over.

“No, I’m serious.”

“What’s up, then?”

“Open the window and I’ll tell you all about it.”

“Open it,” said Duchesne.

Gilbert opened the window and shook hands with the turnkey, who had already carefully befriended the two gendarmes.

“So what’s up, citizen Mardoche?” repeated Gilbert.

“What’s up is that the session of the Convention got a bit heated. Did you read about it?”

“No. What happened?”

“Ah! What happened first is that citizen Hébert was onto something.”

“What?”

“He found out that the plotters, who were thought to be dead, are very much alive and kicking.”

“Ah, yes,” said Gilbert. “Delessart and Thierry. I heard about that; they’re in England, the rotters.”

“And the Knight of Maison-Rouge?” said the turnkey, raising his voice so that the Queen would hear him.

“What! Don’t tell me he’s in England too, that one?”

“Not at all, he’s in France,” continued Mardoche, keeping his voice at the same pitch.

“You mean he came back?”

“He never left.”

“He’s got guts, I’ll give him that,” said Duchesne.

“That’s how he is.”

“Well then, we’ll have to try to stop him.”

“Of course we’ll try to stop him, but that’s not an easy task, apparently.”

At that moment the Queen’s file screeched loudly against the iron; fearing that it would be heard despite the efforts he was making to cover it, the turnkey brought his heel down hard on one of the dog’s front paws, and it gave a yowl of pain.

“Oh, poor thing,” said Gilbert.

“Bah!” said the turnkey. “He should have worn his sabots. Quiet, Girondin, quiet!”

“His name’s Girondin, your dog, eh, citizen Mardoche?”

“Yes, it’s just a name I gave him, no reason.”

“So you were saying,” Duchesne said. A prisoner himself, he took as much interest in any bit of news as any other prisoner. “You were saying?”

“Ah, yes, that’s right, I was saying that citizen Hébert—now there’s a patriot! I was saying that citizen Hébert made a motion to bring the Austrian woman back to the Temple.”

“Why is that?”

“Why do you think! He reckons they only took her out of the Temple to stop her being searched pronto by the Commune of Paris.”

“Oh! Not to mention to get her away from this damned Maison-Rouge with all his escape plans,” said Gilbert. “I believe the