“Qui vive?”
“Mont-joie—Saint-Denis.”
“Sacre!” answered the other. “Ring the great bell! Ring, for heaven’s sake!”
The watchman remained standing for a while looking at the coloured lights on the church tower of St. Cloud. In order to be quite certain, he repeated his signal, and received for answer: “Right understood.”
The old man sighed “Thy will be done, O Lord!” He was on the point of returning to the turret-chamber, when the wind blew so violently, that he had to seize the arm of the horned monster in order to stand fast. But the figure had got loose; it yielded, and moved a little.
“He too!” muttered the old man to himself. “Nothing stands fast, everything slips; nothing remains on which to support oneself.” He crouched down in order not to be blown away, and so stooping, as he walked, reached the door of the turret-chamber, which he flung open.
“The Revolution is over,” he called out to the bookcase.
“What do you say?”
“The Revolution is over! Come out, sire.”
He laid hold of the bookcase, and opened it like a door on its hinges. It concealed a neat little room furnished in the style of Louis XV. Out of it stepped a man of about thirty, with pale delicate features and a melancholy aspect.