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The two men entered first and saw that the owner had kept his word: the house was completely empty. They closed the shutters with the greatest care, killed the light, and lit candles that Morand had brought in his pocket. Then the other men filed in, one after the other. They were the master tanner’s usual dinner guests, the same black marketeers who had tried to dispatch Maurice one night and had since become his friends.

They closed all the doors and went down into the cellar. This cellar, though virtually disregarded earlier that day, had come into its own that evening as the focal point of the house. They first set to work blocking all openings through which any inquisitive eyes could peer inside. Then Morand swiftly upended an empty barrel and began tracing geometric figures on a piece of paper.

While Morand was drawing, his cohorts, led by Dixmer, left the house and followed the rue de la Corderie to the corner of the rue de la Beauce, where they came to a halt by the side of a covered carriage.

In this carriage was a man who quietly handed each of them a pioneer’s tool not to be found in a tanner’s kit: one got a spade, the next a pick; the third a lever, the fourth a hoe. Each of the men hid the implement he had been given under his coat, then the miners retraced their steps back to the little house and the car disappeared.

Morand had finished his work. He went straight to one corner of the cellar.

“Here,” he said, “start digging.”

And the workers of deliverance immediately set to work.

The situation for the prisoners of the Temple had become more and more serious and, especially, more and more painful. For a moment, the Queen, Madame Elisabeth, and Madame Royale had had their hopes raised again. The municipal officers Toulan and Lepître, moved by compassion for the august prisoners, had shown them care and kindness. At first, unused to such marks of sympathy, the poor women were mistrustful. But you can’t be mistrustful when you have hope. Besides, what more could happen to the Queen, separated as she was from her son by prison, separated from her husband by death? To go to the scaffold as he had done? That was a fate she had stared in the face for so long now that she had wound up growing used to it.

When Toulan and Lepître’s tour of duty came around, the Queen asked them to tell her the details of the King’s death, if it was true that they were concerned for her fate. This was a sad test of their sympathy. Lepître had been present at the execution and he obeyed the Queen’s command. The Queen next asked for the newspaper reports of the execution and Lepître promised to bring them next time he was on duty—guard duty came up every three weeks.

In the King’s day, there had been four municipal officers at the Temple. Once the King was dead, these were reduced to three: one who kept watch in the day and two who kept watch at night. Toulan and Lepître managed to rig it so that they were always on night duty together.

The guard duty roster was determined by drawing ballots from a hat. On one ballot you had to write “day” and on two other ballots “night.” Each man drew his ballot from a hat so that luck sorted out the night guards. Every time Toulan and Lepître were on duty, they would write “day” on all three ballots before presenting the hat to the municipal officer they wanted to oust. The latter would plunge his hand into the improvised urn and would, of course, pull out a ballot with the word “day” on it. Toulan and Lepître would then destroy the other two ballots, muttering about Providence always handing them the most boring chore—that is, night duty.

When the Queen was sure of the two guards, she put them in contact with the Knight of Maison-Rouge. But then an escape plan was nipped in the bud. The Queen and Madame Elisabeth were supposed to flee disguised as municipal officers, with identity cards that would be procured for them. As for the two children, that is, Madame Royale and