"Take these to my mother, please!" Poor Gomin gathered them up and carried them from the room without a word. And Louis Charles smiled to himself all that day, thinking of the pleasure he had given his mother. Who shall say that Marie Antoinette, looking down on her little son from that other world, did not smile too, and bless him in her heart!
So the months passed, till one night in January, 1795, as Jean was preparing to go home for his weekly visit to the Rue de Lille, Caron laid his hand on the boy's arm.
"Don't go home to-night,—at least not till later!" he whispered.
"Why not?" demanded Jean wonderingly.
"Because the time has come!" answered Caron, enigmatically. But Jean understood, and waited in breathless expectation. Later the two passed into the deserted streets about the Temple. Caron stopped suddenly in the shadow of a high wall, and grasped Jean's arm.
"Are you truly devoted to him?" he asked in an undertone pointing to the Tower.
"I am!" responded the boy quietly, in a simple but convincing manner.
"So much so that you are willing to risk life, liberty, everything, in his cause?"
"Yes!"
"Then come with me!" And Caron led the way through many winding, half-deserted streets, till at length they stood before a little tumble-down hovel in a black, unsightly alley. Caron knocked on the door with three peculiar taps, two loud and one soft. The door was opened a moment later by an unseen hand, and someone demanded: