“Death is an interruption.”
“Ma demeure sera bientôt le néant.”
Which could one hope for her, pondering only that delirious outcry from her lips?
Possibly, indeed, she had been mad from first to last.
I had time to collect my thoughts, for—from whatever cause—Citizen Tinville had, it appeared, overlooked me.
CHAPTER XI.
PYRAMUS AND THISBE.
I was taking exercise one forenoon in the yard of the prison. It was the last black “Prairial” of the “Terror”—the month, like the girl La Lune, once dedicate to Mary—and its blue eyes curiously scrutinised, as Cleopatra’s of old, the processes amongst us slaves of that poison that is called despair.
As for myself, I yet a little consorted with Hope—the fond clinging mistress I had dreaded to find banished with the rest of the dear creatures whose company had long now been denied us;—for five months had passed since my incarceration, and I was still, it seemed, forgotten.
I trod the flags—fifty paces hither and thither. Going one way, I had always before my eyes the frowzy stone rampart and barred windows of the prison. Going the other, an execrable statue of M. Rousseau—surmounting an altar to Liberty, the very cement of which was marbled with the blood of the massacres—closed my perspective. To my either hand was a lofty wall—the first giving upon the jailers’ quarters; the second dividing the men’s yard from that in which the women were permitted to walk; and a foul open sewer, tunnelled through the latter about its middle, traversed the entire area, and offered the only means by which the sexes could now communicate with each other.
“M. Thibaut,” said a voice at my ear; and a gentleman, detaching himself from the aimless and loitering crowd of prisoners, adapted his pace to mine and went with me to and fro.