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“I’m more than halfway,” answered the Queen.

“Oh, God! God!” he murmured. “Hurry up! Hurry up!”

“Well then, citizen Mardoche,” said Duchesne, “where’ve you got to?”

“Here I am,” cried the turnkey, swiftly returning to the window of the front compartment.

At that very moment, as he was about to resume his place, a terrible cry rang out through the prison, followed by swearing and then the sound of a sword sliding out of its metal sheath.

“Oh, you mongrel! Oh, you bastard!” cried Gilbert.

The noise of a struggle in the corridor was heard. At the same time the door swung open, revealing to Mardoche’s stunned gaze two shadows glued together in the wicket suddenly giving way to a woman, who shunted Duchesne aside and rushed headlong into the Queen’s compartment.

Duchesne did not bother with the woman but ran instead to help his embattled comrade. Mardoche leapt to the other window, where he saw the woman at the Queen’s knees, begging her, pleading with the illustrious prisoner to change into her clothes.

He strained, eyes blazing, to make out the woman’s face, which he feared he already recognized. All of a sudden he gave a mournful cry.

“Geneviève! Geneviève!” he cried.

The Queen had dropped the file and looked annihilated by yet another aborted attempt at escape.

Mardoche grabbed the iron bar, half sawed off by the file, with both hands and shook it in a supreme effort. But the steel bite was not deep enough; the bar resisted.

Meanwhile, Dixmer had managed to push Gilbert back into the cell and was about to go in after him when Duchesne threw his weight against the door and managed to push it back, though he couldn’t quite close it, for Dixmer in his desperation had jammed his arm between the door and the wall. At the end of this arm was the dagger, which, though blunted by the copper guard of his sword belt, had sliced all the way down the gendarme’s chest, slitting open his clothes and tearing the flesh.

The two men rallied with all their combined force and managed to raise the cry for help at the same time. Dixmer felt his arm was about to break; he rammed his shoulder against the door and managed to pull his bruised arm out before the door banged shut and Duchesne slid the bolts into place as Gilbert turned the key.

Rapid steps were heard in the corridor, and then it was all over but the shouting. The two gendarmes looked at each other and gazed about them. They heard the noise the phony turnkey was making as he tried to break the bar.

Gilbert rushed to the Queen’s cell, where he found Geneviève on her knees, pleading with the Queen to change into her clothes. Duchesne grabbed his rifle and ran to the window. He saw a man hanging by the bars, which he was shaking with rage and trying in vain to scale.

Gilbert took aim. The young man saw the barrel of the rifle being lowered at him.

“Go ahead!” he shouted. “Shoot! Kill me!”

Sublime in despair, the Knight stuck out his chest in defiance of a mere bullet.

“Knight!” cried the Queen. “Knight, I beg you. Stay alive! Live!”

At the sound of Marie Antoinette’s voice, Maison-Rouge dropped to his knees. The shot left the gun, but that movement saved him and the bullet flew over his head. But Geneviève believed her friend had been killed and she fell senseless to the hard brick floor.

When the smoke cleared, there was no one left in the Women’s Courtyard.

Ten minutes later, thirty soldiers led by two commissioners turned the Conciergerie inside out, paying particular attention to its most inaccessible recesses. But they found nobody. The clerk had sauntered past old man Richard in his armchair, serene and smiling. As for the turnkey, he had run out shouting: “Alarm! Alarm! Sound the alarm!”

The sentry on duty at the entrance had wanted to pin him with his bayonet, but the turnkey’s dogs had leapt at the sentry’s throat.

Only Geneviève was arrested, interrogated, thrown in jail.

45

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We can no longer leave in the shade one of the principal characters of this story, the man who, while the accumulated events of the preceding chapter