Toward 10 o'clock, Maurice reached the section of which he was the secretary. The commotion was great. The question in agitation was, to vote an address to the Convention in order to repress the conspiracies of the Girondins. They impatiently awaited the arrival of Maurice.
The only subject talked about was the return of the Chevalier de Maison-Rouge, the audacity with which this arch-conspirator had for the second time entered Paris, where he well knew a price was now fixed on his head.
To this circumstance was attributed the attempt made the preceding evening on the Temple, and each one expressed his hatred and indignation against the traitors and aristocrats.
Contrary to the general expectation, Maurice appeared preoccupied and silent, wrote down the proclamation, finished his employment in three hours, demanded if the sitting had terminated, and receiving an answer in the affirmative, took his hat, and proceeded toward the Rue Saint Honoré.
Arrived there, Paris appeared quite different to him. He revisited the corner of the Rue du Coq, where during the night he had first seen the lovely unknown struggling in the hands of soldiers. Thence he proceeded to the Pont Marie, the same road he had travelled by her side, stopping where the different patrols had stopped them, repeating in the same places (as if they had preserved an echo of their words) the sentences exchanged between them; only it was now one o'clock in the afternoon, and the sun, shining brilliantly upon this walk, reminded him at every step of the occurrences of the past night.
Maurice crossed the bridges, and entered directly the Rue Victor, as it was then called.
"Poor woman," murmured Maurice, "she did not reflect yesterday that the duration of the night was only twelve hours, and that her secret would not in all probability last longer than the night. By the light of the sun, I will endeavor to find the door through which she vanished, and who knows but I may perhaps even see her at a window?"
He then entered the old Rue Saint Jacques, and placed himself in the same spot as the unknown had placed him on the preceding evening. For an instant he closed his eyes, perhaps foolishly expecting the kiss he had then received would again impress his lips. But he felt nothing but the remembrance; 'tis true that burned yet.
Maurice opened his eyes and saw two little streets, one to the right, the other to the left. They were muddy, dirty, and badly paved, furnished with barriers, cut by little bridges thrown over a kennel. There might be seen the beams of arches, nooks, corners, and twenty doors propped up, fast falling into decay. Here was hard labor in all its misery, here was misery in all its hideousness. Here and there was a garden enclosed by a fence, others by palisades of poles, some by walls; skins were hanging in the out-houses, diffusing around that disgusting odor always arising from a tanyard.
Maurice's search lasted for nearly two hours, during which he found nothing, and divined nothing, and ten times he had retraced his steps to consider where he was. But all his efforts were in vain, his search was a fruitless one, as all trace of the young woman seemed to have been effaced by the fog and rain of the previous night.