“I certainly think that measure ought to be adequate,” he said with a gentle air of assumed modesty, “unless you would prefer to arrest the woman and lodge her here, keeping her here as an hostage.”
“No, no!” said Heron with a gruff laugh; “that idea does not appeal to me nearly so much as the other. I should not feel so secure on the way.... I should always be thinking that that cursed woman had been allowed to escape.... No! no! I would rather keep her under my own eye—just as you suggest, citizen Chauvelin... and under the prisoner’s, too,” he added with a coarse jest. “If he did not actually see her, he might be more ready to try and save himself at her expense. But, of course, he could not see her shot before his eyes. It is a perfect plan, citizen, and does you infinite credit; and if the Englishman tricked us,” he concluded with a fierce and savage oath, “and we did not find Capet at the end of the journey, I would gladly strangle his wife and his friend with my own hands.”
“A satisfaction which I would not begrudge you, citizen,” said Chauvelin dryly. “Perhaps you are right... the woman had best be kept under your own eye... the prisoner will never risk her safety on that, I would stake my life. We’ll deliver our final ‘either—or’ the moment that she has joined our party, and before we start further on our way. Now, citizen Heron, you have heard my advice; are you prepared to follow it?”
“To the last letter,” replied the other.
And their two hands met in a grasp of mutual understanding—two hands already indelibly stained with much innocent blood, more deeply stained now with seventeen past days of inhumanity and miserable treachery to come.
CHAPTER XXXVIII. CAPITULATION
What occurred within the inner cell of the Conciergerie prison within the next half-hour of that 16th day of Pluviose in the year II of the Republic is, perhaps, too well known to history to need or bear overfull repetition.
Chroniclers intimate with the inner history of those infamous days have told us how the chief agent of the Committee of General Security gave orders one hour after midnight that hot soup, white bread and wine be served to the prisoner, who for close on fourteen days previously had been kept on short rations of black bread and water; the sergeant in charge of the guard-room watch for the night also received strict orders that that same prisoner was on no account to be disturbed until the hour of six in the morning, when he was to be served with anything in the way of breakfast that he might fancy.
All this we know, and also that citizen Heron, having given all necessary orders for the morning’s expedition, returned to the Conciergerie, and found his colleague Chauvelin waiting for him in the guard-room.