And he sprang to secure this harmless instrument, which, in his hand, was to become a formidable weapon. He then retired behind the door, and so placed himself that he could see without being seen. His heart beat so tumultuously that in the deep silence its palpitations might be heard. Suddenly Maurice shuddered from head to foot. A voice had said,—
"If you act according to my advice, you will break a pane, and through the bars kill him with a shot from a carbine."
"Oh, no, no!—not an explosion," said another voice, "that might betray us. Besides, Dixmer, there is your wife."
"I have just looked at her through the blind; she suspects nothing—she is reading."
"Dixmer, you shall decide for us. Do you advocate a shot from the carbine, or a stroke from the poniard?"
"Avoid firearms as much as possible—the poniard."
"Then let it be the poniard. Come!"
"Come!" repeated five or six voices, together.
Maurice was a child of the Revolution, with a heart of flint, and in mind, like many others at that epoch, an atheist. But at the word "Come!" pronounced behind the door, which alone separated him from death, he remembered the sign of the cross, which his mother had taught him when an infant he said his prayers at her knee.