Clarisse, Thérèse, and Olivier watched this performance, understanding nothing of it. Madame de Choiseul looked at them to note their expression, and with one accord the three turned to question her—
"That is a new game, is it not?"
"Yes, and a rather gloomy one," answered Madame de Choiseul. Then she added solemnly, "Those ladies are learning how to walk to the scaffold."
She explained to them that the wooden steps which the condemned had to climb to reach the guillotine were difficult to ascend. The women encountered serious obstacles in mounting, being without the assistance of their hands, which were tied behind them. They stumbled and slipped, their dresses sometimes catching in the woodwork, to the great amusement of the rabble crowd.
"It is to avoid these accidents," she said, "and to be able to meet their martyrdom respected by the mob, that they rehearse the role which they may be called upon to play on the morrow, perhaps, in public."
Olivier was dumb with admiration before this contempt of the scaffold, the general resignation to the thought of death.
Presently peals of laughter were heard. The Marquise d'Avaux, just before reaching the last stool, caught her dress on the back of a chair. She laughed with the rest, and said gaily, showing her torn skirt—
"Some more work for this evening!"
"You see," continued Madame de Choiseul, "what the indifference which revolted you so much just now hides in reality. Many of those young women keep up the failing courage of the men at the scaffold, and offer to die first."
But Clarisse, whose curiosity was now satisfied, tried to turn attention from these gloomy subjects, her mother's heart telling her they would reawaken Olivier's apprehensions. She soon found a pretext. Madame de Narbonne passed them with her little girl, holding a basket of fruit, of which the child partook without restraint.