Gerald shook his head.
‘It was your friend Robespierre sent them to the knife.’ Gerald started, and tried to understand what was said.
‘Ask him about La Gabrielle,’ whispered another. ‘What of La Gabrielle? she was Marietta,’ cried Gerald wildly.
‘She might have been. We only knew her as she figured before our own eyes. In November last she was the Goddess of Reason.’
‘No, no; I deny it,’ cried another; ‘La Gabrielle had fled from France before.’
‘She was the Goddess of Reason, I repeat,’ said the other. ‘She that used to blush scarlet, when they led her out, after the scene, to receive the plaudits of the audience, stood shameless before the mob on the steps of the Pantheon.’
‘And I tell you her name was Maillard; it was easy enough to mistake her for La Gabrielle, for she had the same long, waving, light-brown hair.’
‘Marietta’s hair was black as night,’ muttered Gerald; ‘her complexion, too, was the deep olive of the far south, and of her own peculiar race, I ought to know,’ added he aloud; ‘we wandered many a pleasant mile together through the valleys of the Apennines.’
The glance of compassionate pity they turned upon him showed how they read these remembrances of the past.
‘Which of you has dared to speak ill of her?’ cried he suddenly, as a gleam of intelligence shot through his reverie. ‘Was it you? or you? or you?’