Girard endeavored to speak.
"I will not hear you; leave me!" said she, with the gesture of Marie Thérèse.
Girard went out.
Maison-Rouge essayed to gain a glimpse of her through the opening in the screen; but the prisoner had turned her back. The executioner's assistant crossed before the curé; he came in holding a cord in his hand. The two gendarmes pushed the Chevalier toward the door; amazed, despairing, and utterly bewildered, before he had been able to utter a cry or make the slightest movement to effect his purpose, he found himself with the curé in the corridor of the turnkey. This corridor brought them again into the register-office, where the news of the queen's refusal had already circulated, and where the Austrian pride of Marie Antoinette was to some the pretext of the coarsest invectives, and to others the subject of secret admiration.
"Go!" said Richard to the abbé, "return home, since she repulses you, and let her die as she likes."
"Well, she is in the right," said Richard's wife, "and I would act in the same way."
"Then you would do wrong, Madame," said the curé.
"Be silent," said the keeper, opening his eyes very wide; "what does it concern you? Go, Abbé, go!"
"No," said Girard, "no; I will, notwithstanding all, accompany her; one word, only one word, if she will listen, might bring her back to duty; besides, I am sent by the order of the Commune, and I must discharge my office."