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“I have to, since you want it so badly. You will wait for me down below, and when she goes into the office, you’ll see her then.…”

The Knight seized the old man’s hand and kissed it with the same fervor and respect as if he were kissing a crucifix.

“Oh!” murmured the Knight. “At least she’ll die like a queen and the hand of the butcher won’t touch her!”

48

THE CART

The moment he obtained the consent of the curé of Saint-Landry, Maison-Rouge dashed to a half-open closet that he recognized as the grooming booth where the priest completed his toilet. There, in a sleight of hand, his beard and mustache fell under the razor, and it was only then that he could see for himself how horribly pale he was. It was frightening.

When he returned he was outwardly calm. And he seemed to have forgotten completely that despite losing the beard and mustache, he could still be recognized at the Conciergerie.

He trotted behind the priest, whom two commissioners had come to get while he had been shut away shaving; and with the audacity that removes any suspicion, with the frantic and distorting bravura fever produces, the Knight entered the gate that at the time led to the courtyard of the Palais de Justice.

Like abbé Girard, he was dressed in a black frock coat, ecclesiastical habits having long been abolished.

Inside the office, they found more than fifty people, either prison employees, deputies, or commissioners, getting ready to watch the Queen pass by—either as attorneys and representatives or out of sheer bloody-minded curiosity.

His heart was beating so hard when he found himself facing the wicket that he no longer heard the priest’s conversation with the gendarmes and the concierge. But a man holding enormous scissors and a piece of freshly cut cloth bumped into Maison-Rouge on the landing. Maison-Rouge turned around and recognized the executioner.

“What are you after, citizen?” asked Sanson.

The Knight tried to suppress a shiver that ripped through his veins despite his best efforts.

“Me?” he said. “As you can see, citizen Sanson, I am with the abbé of Saint-Landry.”

“Oh, right!” replied the executioner before stepping aside and barking orders at his aide.

Meanwhile Maison-Rouge went into the registrar’s office. From there he slipped into the compartment where the two gendarmes were.

Those fine men were distraught. As dignified and arrogant as she had been with others, the condemned woman had been goodness itself with them, nothing but sweetness and light: they were more like servants to her than her wardens.

But from where he was the Knight could not see the Queen: the screen was shut. It had been opened only to allow the priest through and then closed behind him. When the Knight entered, the conversation was already under way.

“Monsieur,” the Queen was saying in her shrill and haughty voice, “since you swore an oath to the Republic, in the name of which they are putting me to death, I cannot trust in you. We no longer worship the same God!”

“Madame,” replied Girard, deeply moved by this disdainful profession of faith, “a Christian who is about to die must die without hate in her heart, and she must not turn her back on her God, in whatever form He presents Himself to her.”

Maison-Rouge stepped forward to move the screen, hoping that when she saw him, that when she understood the cause that brought him, she would change her mind about the priest. But the two gendarmes rose as one.

“But,” protested Maison-Rouge, “I’m the priest’s acolyte.…”

“Since she’s rejecting the priest,” said Duchesne, “she doesn’t need his acolyte.”

“But perhaps she will accept me,” said Maison-Rouge, raising his voice. “She can’t possibly not accept.”

But Marie Antoinette was too immersed in her fury to hear and recognize the Knight’s voice.

“Go, monsieur!” she said, addressing herself to Girard still. “Leave me, get out! Since we now live under the reign of freedom in France, I am claiming my freedom to die as I choose.”

Girard tried to resist.

“Leave me, monsieur!” she said. “I’m telling you to go!”

Girard tried to get