"All that a man can do to save a woman, I will do to save your daughter."
"He cannot save her!" cried the woman, uttering piercing cries,—"he cannot save her! When he promised me he lied."
"Do what you can for the queen, and I will do all in my power for your daughter."
"What care I for the queen? She is a mother who has a daughter. But if they come to cutting off heads, it will not be her daughter's they will cut off, but her own. They may cut my throat so that they spare my child. They may lead me to the guillotine, so that they do not harm a hair of her head, and I will go there singing,—
"Ah! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira,
Les aristocrates à la lanterne...."
And she commenced singing in a frightful voice, then suddenly stopped short, and burst into a fit of frenzied laughter.
The man in the mantle himself appeared alarmed at this burst of madness, and retreated a step or two from her.
"Ah! you shall not escape me thus," said the woman Tison, in despair, and retaining her hold of his mantle; "you shall not at one moment come and say to a mother, 'Do this, and I will rescue your child,' and afterward say, 'Perhaps.' Will you save her?"
"Yes."
"When?"