Malden named his old, infirm mother and Valory his young orphan sister. The Queen stopped in her writing to wipe her eyes.
"Count," she said, turning to Charny, "we know that you have no one to mention as you have lost your two brothers——"
"Yes, they had the happiness to perish for your sake," said the nobleman "but the latter to fall leaves a poor girl recommended in a kind of will found upon him. He stole her away from her family which will never forgive her. So long as I live she and her child never shall want, but, as your Majesty says with her admirable courage, we are all in the face of death, and if death strikes me down, she and her babe will be penniless. Madam, deign to write the name of this poor country girl, and if I die like the others of the house of Charny, for my august master and noble mistress, lower your generosity to Catherine Billet and her child, in Villedovray."
No doubt the idea of George Charny expiring like his brothers was too dreadful a picture for the hearer, for in swaying back with a faint cry, she let the tablets fall and sank giddily on a chair. The two Guards hastened to her while Charny caught up the memo-book and inscribed the name and address.
The Queen recovered and said: "Gentlemen, do not leave me without kissing my hand."
The Lifeguards obeyed, but when it came Charny's turn he barely brushed the hand with his lips. It seemed to him sacrilege when he was carrying Andrea's letter on his heart. The Queen sighed: never had she so accurately measured the depth of the gulf between her and her lover, widening daily.
As the Guards therefore replied next day to the Committeemen that they would not change their attire from what the King authorized them to wear, Barnave had an extra seat placed in front of them with two grenadiers to occupy it so as to shield them in some degree.
At ten A. M. they quitted Meaux for Paris, from which they had been five days absent.
What an unfathomable abyss had deepened in those few days.