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“What is it, then?” said Lorin. “Do you know that mortal, goddess?”

“No. I thought at first … But obviously I was mistaken.”

“Yet she signaled to you,” Lorin insisted.

“Why is she being a flower girl this morning?” Artemisia wondered out loud.

“So you admit you know her, Artemisia?” asked Lorin.

“Yes,” said Artemisia. “She’s just a flower girl I sometimes buy from.”

“Whatever the case,” said Lorin, “your flower girl has a strange way of getting rid of her goods.”

They both took a last look at the flowers, which were already whirling past the wooden footbridge, propelled by a second arm of the river that passes under the arches there; then they continued walking toward La Rapée, where they were planning to dine tête-à-tête.

For the moment the incident rested there. But because it was strange and smacked of a certain mysteriousness, it burned itself into Lorin’s poetic imagination.

Meanwhile, Mother Tison’s denunciation, brought against Maurice and Lorin, caused a great stir at the Jacobin club. Maurice, at the Temple, received the advice of the Commune that his liberty was threatened by public indignation. This was an invitation to the young municipal officer to hide if he was guilty. But Maurice remained at the Temple, since he had nothing to hide, and when they came to arrest him they found him at his post.

Maurice was interrogated on the spot. While sticking to the firm resolution not to implicate friends of whom he was sure, Maurice was not a man to sacrifice himself ridiculously by remaining silent like some hero in a romantic novel, and so he demanded that the flower girl be called to account.

It was five o’clock in the evening when Lorin got home. He learned that instant of Maurice’s arrest and the demand that the latter had made. The flower girl of the pont Marie, throwing her flowers into the Seine, immediately sprang to mind as sharply as a sudden revelation. This strange woman, the nearness of the neighborhoods in question, Artemisia’s half-confession, everything screamed that there lay the explanation of the mystery Maurice demanded be clarified.

Lorin bolted from his room, flew down the four flights of stairs as though he had wings, and ran to the Goddess of Reason’s, where he found her embroidering gold stars on a dress of blue gauze. This was to be her dress as a divinity.

“Enough stars, dear friend,” said Lorin. “They arrested Maurice this morning and I’ll probably be arrested tonight.”

“Maurice, arrested?”

“Yes, by God! These days what could be more common than major calamities; no one pays any attention anymore because they now come in droves, that’s just how it is. But nearly all these major events are brought about by totally trivial things. Let’s not neglect the totally trivial. Who was that flower girl we saw this morning, dear friend?”

Artemisia jumped.

“What flower girl?”

“Oh, for crying out loud! The one who was tossing her flowers so extravagantly into the Seine.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” said Artemisia. “Is that such a serious matter that you have to keep harping on it?”

“So serious, dear friend, that I beseech you to answer my question this very instant.”

“My friend, I can’t.”

“Goddess, there’s nothing you can’t do.”

“I’m honor-bound not to say.”

“And I am honor-bound to make you say.”

“But why are you so insistent?”

“Because … Christ! So Maurice doesn’t get the chop!”

“Oh, my God! Maurice guillotined!” cried the young woman in fright.

“To say nothing of myself, though I’m not sure I can honestly say I’ve still got my head screwed on to begin with.”

“Oh! No. No,” said Artemisia. “It would mean losing your head, without fail.”

At that moment, Lorin’s officieux rushed into Artemisia’s room.

“Ah, citizen!” he cried. “Run! Run!”

“Why would I do that?” asked Lorin.

“Because the gendarmes have come for you. While they were breaking down the door, I managed to get through to the house next door over the rooftops so I could come and warn you.”

Artemisia gave out a terrible cry. She really loved Lorin, after all.

“Artemisia,” said Lorin, facing her squarely,