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Geneviève flashed a lightning glance at Morand to see what effect this insult had on him. Morand did, in fact, wince; his eyes glinted with a strange kind of phosphorescence and he clenched his fists for a second. But all these telltale signs were so rapid they went unnoticed.

“What’s that officer’s name?” Geneviève asked Maurice.

“That’s citizen Mercerault,” the young man replied. Then he added, as though to excuse the man’s crassness: “A stonecutter.”1

Mercerault heard him and gave him a sidelong look.

“Come, come,” said Mother Tison, “finish your sausage and your half-bottle and let me clear the table.”

“It’s not the Austrian woman’s fault if I’m eating at this hour,” grumbled the municipal officer. “If she could’ve had me killed on the tenth of August, she wouldn’t have given it a second thought; so the day she sneezes in the sack,2 I’ll be in the first row, hale and hearty and happy as a lark.”

Morand turned deathly white.

“Let’s go, citizen Maurice,” said Geneviève. “Come and put us where you promised to put us. I feel like a prisoner here; I can’t breathe.”

Maurice whisked Morand and Geneviève away; the sentries, alerted by Lorin, let them pass without a protest. He set them up in a small hallway on the top floor, so that when the Queen, Madame Elisabeth, and Madame Royale went up to the gallery, the august prisoners had no choice but to go past them.

As the promenade was set for ten o’clock and there were still a few minutes to go, Maurice not only did not leave his friends but further, so that not even a whiff of suspicion should fall on this ever so slightly illegal initiative, having encountered citizen Agricola, he brought him along with them.

Ten o’clock sounded.

“Open!” cried a voice from the base of the tower that Maurice recognized as belonging to Santerre.

Immediately the guards took up arms, the gates were shut, the sentries primed their guns. Throughout the courtyard a great clatter of iron and stones and marching feet could be heard. It seemed to have made a vivid impression on Morand and Geneviève, for Maurice saw them both turn pale.

“So many precautions just to guard three women!” Geneviève murmured.

“Yes,” said Morand, trying to laugh. “If the people trying to rescue them were in our shoes now and could see what we see, they’d think twice.”

“Indeed,” said Geneviève, “I’m beginning to think they won’t get away.”

“And me, I hope not,” said Maurice. Leaning over the ramp at those words, he added: “Stand back. Here come the prisoners.”

“Tell me who’s who,” said Geneviève, “I don’t know them.”

“The two in front are the sister and daughter of Capet. The one bringing up the rear, preceded by a little dog, is Marie Antoinette.”

Geneviève took a step forward. But Morand, on the contrary, instead of peering down, pressed up against the wall. His lips were more livid and chalky than the stone of the dungeon.

With her white dress and her beautiful clear eyes, Geneviève looked like an angel in attendance on the prisoners, waiting to light the hard road they had to tread and put a little love in their hearts as they passed.

Madame Elisabeth and Madame Royale passed after glancing in amazement at the strangers, no doubt the first of them imagining that these were the friends announced by the signs, for she turned around sharply toward Madame Royale and squeezed her hand, while dropping her handkerchief as though to alert the Queen.

“Be careful, my sister,” she said. “I seem to have dropped my handkerchief.”

With that, she continued to mount the stairs with the young princess.

The Queen, whose panting breath and small dry cough indicated her malady, bent down to pick up the handkerchief that had fallen at her feet. But her little dog beat her to it; he snatched it and ran to give it to Madame Elisabeth. And so the Queen continued to climb the stairs. After a few steps she, too, found herself before Geneviève, Morand, and the young municipal officer.

“Oh! Flowers!” she cried. “It