"It is best that you should not know," said De Batz. "The manner of it will be attended with great risk, and you will come through it better if you are ignorant. Only, do not be surprised at anything that may happen!"
On the third day, the jailers entered the cell at noon, accompanied by a court-crier. Jean and the Baron exchanged a look, for they knew that the fate of at least one of them was to be sealed that day. To their joy, both their names were read to appear before the tribunal. The jailers left them saying that they would be back in half an hour.
"This is a godsend!" exclaimed the Baron. "Nothing could have been better than that we should go out at the same time. If we are rescued it will be together, and if not,—well, at least we will die in each other's company!" The jailers came back in a few moments and bound the hands of the two behind their backs. In the courtyard they found a band of thirty more victims, in charge of a corps of gendarmes, all petrified into a very apathy of fearful anticipation. Strangely enough, there was not even a tear shed by the band of the condemned. The sobs and lamentations came wholly from the friends they were leaving.
Out from the courtyard, and along dark galleries and passages they were herded like so many cattle, till at length they were pushed into the great gloomy room where sat the far-famed Tribunal of Terror. Three judges robed in black, wearing plumed hats, sat on a high platform, and scribbled occasional notes. A clerk called out the list of names, to which each prisoner responded. Then, one by one, the names were read again, and a charge against each was hastily gabbled over, which the prisoners scarcely heard and in nine cases out of ten did not understand. When asked if they had anything to say in their defence, each murmured calmly and hopelessly, "No!" After this, one of the judges rose and pronounced the sentence:
"You are all found guilty of conspiring against the Republic! I pronounce upon you the sentence of immediate death!"
There was no surprise and scarcely any interest created by this. Why should there be! They had expected it from the beginning! For the most part they were as those already dead. The gendarmes hurried them out by another passage, and they came to an open gate, beyond which stood the tumbrils waiting for their daily load. Here a great crowd of the populace had collected. But where months ago they had hooted and jeered at the doomed ones, now the sympathy of the majority was with the victims, and the carts were loaded in a sorrowful silence, broken only by the occasional cry of some outsider who beheld a friend among the condemned.
Jean and De Batz were reserved for the last cart, and just before they entered, the boy saw his friend make an almost imperceptible motion of the head to a man in the crowd who instantly disappeared. "Courage!" whispered the Baron to his little comrade, as they were flung unceremoniously into the tumbril, accompanied by ten or twelve others. That ride was a thing to be remembered as one recalls a shuddering nightmare. Crowded in as they were, Jean saw no possible hope of rescue, and the cart jolted on roughly through street after street. They had approached very near the Place de la Révolution and the termination of their ride, when a heavy cart that had driven in between them and the forward tumbril, suddenly broke down, a wheel flew off, and the way was completely blocked.
"Good!" muttered the Baron to Jean. "The first step is a success!" The driver of their tumbril swore roundly, but nothing could be done except drive back a block or two and proceed through a very narrow street, scarcely more than an alley. Meanwhile the crowd had forsaken them, and had hastened on to the guillotine, lest it be too late for the first of the day's executions. The last tumbril would doubtless arrive in good time without their assistance!
The narrow alley into which they now turned was lined with rickety wooden houses, and Jean noticed that De Batz watched one of these narrowly, so he also kept his eye upon it. They had almost reached it when suddenly, out from it rushed ten or fifteen men, all shouting, swearing, lunging at each other with knives and bludgeons, apparently engaged in a fierce dispute that could only be settled by drawing blood. They surged about the tumbril, while the astonished driver sought to clear the way by flourishing his whip, and shouting for a free passage.
In the midst of all this confusion, Jean presently felt a knife inserted between the cords that bound his wrists, and in a second his hands were free. Then he saw that De Batz had likewise been released from his fetters. In the midst of the greatest racket he heard the Baron whisper: