"Only," said Geneviève, "we shall seem to be actuated by that cruel curiosity which induces some persons to mock the misery of unfortunate prisoners from the outside of an iron grating."
"Ah! then why not take your friends to the tower walk, since the woman Capet will take an airing there to-day with her sister and her daughter; for they have left her a daughter, while I who am not guilty, have been deprived of mine. Oh, these aristocrats! it will always be the case; let us do what we will, favor is always shown to them, Citizen Maurice."
"But they have taken from her her son," replied he.
"Ah! if I had a son," murmured the female jailer, "I should lament my daughter less."
Geneviève during this time had exchanged looks with Morand several times.
"Mon ami," said the young woman to Maurice, "the citizen is in the right. If you could by any means place me in the way of Marie Antoinette, it would be less repugnant to my feelings than gazing at her here. It seems to me that this manner of viewing people is at once humiliating both to them and to us."
"Kind Geneviève," said Maurice, "you possess true delicacy of mind."
"Egad! Citizen," said one of Maurice's colleagues who was at that moment breakfasting in the antechamber on bread and sausages, "if you were the prisoner, and Capet's wife felt curiosity to see you, she would not be so very particular about the indulgence of her fancy,—the jade!"
Geneviève, with a movement quicker than lightning, threw a rapid glance toward Morand, to note the effect of these words upon him. In effect, Morand quivered, a strange phosphorescent light gleamed from under his eyelids, and his hands were clinched for an instant; but all this was so momentary that it passed unperceived.