Behind the scribe walked the public accuser. We have seen, we know, and shall meet again at a later period, this dry, jaundiced, cold man, with his blood-shot eyes, who made the ferocious Santerre himself tremble, even when cased in his armor.
Several National Guards and a lieutenant followed them.
Simon, smiling hypocritically, and holding his bear-skin bonnet in one hand and his shoemaker's stirrup in the other, walked before to show the committee the way.
They came to a very dirty chamber, spacious and ill-furnished, at the end of which, seated upon his bed, was the young Louis, in a state of perfect immobility.
When we saw the poor child fleeing from the brutal anger of Simon, he still retained a species of vitality, resenting the unworthy treatment of the shoemaker of the Temple. He fled, he wept, he prayed; then he feared and suffered, but still he hoped.
But now both fear and hope had vanished; without doubt the suffering still existed, but if it still remained, the infant martyr, whom they had made pay after so cruel a fashion for his parents' faults, buried it in the depths of his heart, and veiled it under an appearance of total insensibility. He did not even raise his head when the commissioners walked up to him.
Without further ceremony they instantly installed themselves. The public accuser seated himself at the head of the bed, Simon at the foot, the registrar near the window, the National Guard and their lieutenant on the side and rather in the shade.
Those among them who regarded the little prisoner with the slightest interest, or even curiosity, remarked the child's pallor, his extraordinary stoutness (resulting from his bloated condition), and his bent legs, the joints of which had already begun to swell.
"That child is very ill," said the lieutenant, with an assurance that caused Fouquier to turn round, though already seated and prepared to question his victim.
Little Capet raised his eyes to discover who had uttered these words, and recognized the same young man who had already once before saved him from Simon's cruelty in the court of the Temple. A sweet and intelligent glance shot from his deep blue eyes, and that was all.