"I cannot tell you more, citizen sergeant, I do not know."
"And what about the Englishman?" queried the sergeant more roughly, "the man they call the Scarlet Pimpernel, what do you know of him?"
"Nothing, citizen," replied petite maman, "what should we poor folk know of an English milor?"
"You know at any rate this much, citizeness, that the English milor helped your son Pierre to escape from justice."
"If that is so," said petite maman quietly, "it cannot be wrong for a mother to pray to God to bless her son's preserver."
"It behooves every good citizen," retorted the sergeant firmly, "to denounce all traitors to the Republic."
"But since I know nothing about the Englishman, citizen sergeant—?"
And petite maman shrugged her thin shoulders as if the matter had ceased to interest her.
"Think again, citizeness," admonished the sergeant, "it is your husband's neck as well as your daughter's and your own that you are risking by so much obstinacy."
He waited a moment or two as if willing to give the old woman time to speak: then, when he saw that she kept her thin, quivering lips resolutely glued together he called his corporal to him.