"I am lost," thought Maurice. "They are going to tie a stone round my neck and throw me into some hole of the Bièvre."
But in another moment he felt that the men ascended some steps, where the air was warmer, and where they placed him on a seat. He heard a double door shut and the steps withdraw. He believed that he was left alone. He listened as intently as a man can whose life depends upon a word, and he believed that he heard that same voice whose tones had already struck him as mixing mildness with command, say to the others,—
"Let us deliberate."
GENEVIÈVE.
A quarter of an hour elapsed, which seemed a century to Maurice. Nothing more natural; young, handsome, vigorous, supported in his strength by a hundred devoted friends, in combination with whom he sometimes dreamed of the accomplishment of great achievements, he found himself all at once without the least preparation in peril of losing his life in an ignominious den of assassins.
He understood that they had shut him up in some chamber; but was he watched?
Again he struggled to break his bonds. His muscles of steel swelled and contracted; the cord cut into his flesh, but did not break.