‘But little,’ returned the functionary. ‘Pierre, the scullion, sleeps out of the fortress, and tells me that an eboulement took place last night, and the Bièvre burst into some of the carrières of St. Marcel; and fell so rapidly, in consequence, that all the mills this side of St. Medard were stopped for three hours.’
‘Was anybody lost?’ inquired the physician.
‘It is believed so. A party of Bras d’Acier’s gang were hunted out of the vaults between the Cordelières and Montrouge, like rats in our cachots, when the rains come; and one of the superintendents at the Gobelins was fished up, half-drowned, from a shaft in the Rue Mouffetard.’
‘Do you know his name?’ asked Sainte-Croix eagerly.
‘I can’t say I do,’ returned Galouchet. ‘What rate will you fix your nourriture at, monsieur?’ he continued.
‘I care not,’ said Gaudin; ‘only let it be something that I can eat.’
The day passed on, but the hours lagged so tediously that Time himself appeared to be a prisoner. Little conversation passed between the two inmates of the cell. Exili was occupied in writing nearly the whole day; and Gaudin, who could ill bear the confinement, with his restless and excitable spirit, after the hour’s exercise in the great court allowed to all the prisoners, obtained permission to walk on the ramparts in front of the sentinels. This position commanded a view along the Rue St. Antoine, as well as of the houses in the Rue St. Paul. Towards this point were Gaudin’s eyes constantly directed. He beheld people moving in the streets, and over the plains in the immediate vicinity of the city walls—the coup d’œil was alive with commerce—and the buzz of their voices plainly reached his ear; but he envied them not, nor drew one comparison between their freedom and his state of durance, except when he saw them turn from the great thoroughfare into the small street wherein the Hôtel d’Aubray was situated. He fancied he could pick out the pointed roof of the mansion from amongst the others, and once he imagined that he saw the delicate figure of the Marchioness emerge from the Rue St. Paul, and pass towards the city, without so much as throwing back a glance towards the fortress in which she knew he was confined. And then the hell of jealousy raged in his veins, and he felt the bitterness of captivity. He thought of the circumstances under which he had found her with Theria the preceding evening; then came back the recollection of the impassioned interview, and her apparent devotion to him, until the struggle of his conflicting feelings to establish what he hoped for, over what he dreaded, nearly maddened him.
At length it got dusk, and he could see no more. The murmur of the peopled city died away; the lights appeared in the embrasures of the Bastille, and the night-wind chilled him. He descended once more to his cell, and found his gaoler there.
‘I was coming to seek you, monsieur,’ he said, ‘for the curfew will soon ring. Mass! your supper is nearly cold. Here is a slice of rôti, a plate of eggs, and a salad; you could not fare better at home.’
‘Have any of my things come?’ asked Gaudin.