"What is the name of this municipal?" asked she of Maurice.
"It is the Citizen Mercevault," replied the young man; and then added, as if to apologize for his coarseness, "a stone-cutter."
Mercevault heard it, and cast a sidelong glance at Maurice.
"Come! come!" said the woman Tison; "finish your sausage and your half-bottle, that I may clear the table."
"It is not the fault of the Austrian if I finish them now," grumbled the municipal; "for if she could have murdered me on the 10th of August she would have done so; thus the day when she 'sneezes in the sack' I shall be in the first rank, firm at my post."
Morand turned as pale as death.
"Come! Citizen Maurice," said Geneviève, "let us go where you promised to take us; here it seems as if I were a prisoner. I feel suffocated."
Maurice conducted Geneviève and Morand out, when the sentinels, previously instructed by Lorin, allowed them to pass without any difficulty. They installed themselves in a little passage on the upper story, so that the moment when the queen, Madame Royale, or Madame Elizabeth ascended to the gallery, these august personages could not do otherwise than pass before them.
As the promenade was fixed for ten o'clock, and they had only a few minutes to wait, Maurice not only did not quit his friends, but further, in order that the slightest suspicion might not be excited by this rather illegal proceeding, having met Agricola, he took that municipal with him.