“On the day of the execution of the Marcé family we wrought consciously in an unsympathetic atmosphere. It is so sometimes on that platform of the guillotine, as on the stage, when the actor is aware, he does not know why, of an antagonistic presence in the house. One plays then with caution and deprecation, fearing to give offence. I was very sensitive to a throbbing in the popular pulse; but, as for Jules, he showed no more sign of feeling than was his wont. Indeed, I observed even an increased callousness in the way in which, noting that the heads were seven, he ticked off each one as it fell with a day from the little nursery proverb uttered sub voce, as thus:
“‘Monday, fair of face; Tuesday, full of grace; Wednesday, full of woe; Thursday, far to go; Friday, loving and giving; Saturday, work for a living; Sunday——’
“With the word on his lips, and his hand in the very act of touching off the bolt, he suddenly paled and staggered. I ran to catch him, and looked straight into the face of one that was damned.
“It was the last head, and we conveyed Garreau to his lodging. He was by then in a raving fever, from which he never recovered. But in one of the few lucid intervals that came to him he recognised me, and, catching at my hand, whispered in a voice, whose exquisite horror I shall never forget, the secret of his awakening.
“In the very moment that his fingers released the knife, he had caught sight of a little torn heart printed on the neck beneath him.”
THE LORD TREASURER
“Phineas,” said the Lord Treasurer—“my breeches!”
The attendant, stooping to the august legs, reverentially relieved them of their small-clothes, and his lordship stood up in his shirt with his back to the fire. Even so denuded, he could never have conceived himself as anything less than a hero to his valet—no, not when, with a comfortable rearward shrug of his shoulders, he lifted the veil of his unspeakableness to the gratifying warmth.
“Let me see, Phineas,” said the Lord Treasurer. “To-morrow is Wednesday—the black velvet with the plain falling band, is it not? Very well. Empty that pocket of its papers, Phineas.”
“Yes, my lord.”