He pointed his gun.
The young man saw it levelled at him.
"Oh, yes! yes!" cried he, "kill me! kill me!" and sublime in his despair, he bared his breast to the bullet.
"Chevalier," said the queen,—"Chevalier, I entreat you to live."
At the sound of the queen's voice the Chevalier sank upon his knees. The gun was discharged, but this movement saved him; the ball passed over his head. Geneviève, imagining her friend was dead, fell upon the ground without sense or motion. When the smoke disappeared, no one was seen in the women's court.
Ten minutes afterward, thirty soldiers, led by two commissioners, searched the Conciergerie even to its most inaccessible retreats.
They discovered no one; the registrar had passed, calm and smiling, before Father Richard's arm-chair.
As to the turnkey, he had gone out crying, "Alarm! alarm!"
The sentinel opposed his egress with his bayonet, but his two dogs seized the soldier by the throat.
Geneviève alone was arrested, interrogated, and imprisoned.