"Well, my little Rosa, stop your gossip. I don't suppose danger is being plotted. Neither the King nor Princes are in the castle; as for the Duchess, she is a saint whom no one would harm. What amazes me is the resemblance of the girl to the dead Queen."
"She is a live bird, I'll warrant," answered the woman.
While this dialogue was in progress, the blond girl in black rapidly crossed several streets and reached a deserted square shaded by elm trees. She was almost immediately joined by a man with whom she walked for some distance, entering at last the beginning of a park by a path which skirted the wall. The man consulted from time to time a paper plan which he carried in his hands. He stopped suddenly and examined a breach in the wall.
"Louis Pierre was right," he said.
He vaulted the fence and held forth his arms for the girl, who, crawling along the ruins, came within his reach. Taking her by the waist, he held her for a moment against his breast and spoke passionate words of love.
"Amélie!" he whispered, "when will you become mine for all time? I adore you more than ever."
"René, I long for it as much as you. But O the saddest of presentiments weighs upon me. My father's mind seems giving way beneath the weight of his sorrows. His reason is clouded and confused. If his sister does not open her arms today, alas for him, alas for us! And she will not; this interview is part of an infernal plot—"
"Amélie, you express my fears also. But none of your father's friends are sleeping on their oars. Louis Pierre knows every inch of ground on this place. We are here to defend the cause, he, Giacinto and I. 'Twould have been better had you not come."
"Perhaps so, René, but I wanted so much to be near you. Do not heed my seeming coldness of the last few days. How could I fail in mourning for that innocent, noble man,—victim of low intrigues and his own loyalty? He typifies the people, the people sacrificed to the classes."
"I have been jealous of your devotion, your gratitude. I have longed to be the dead. Had I died, what should you have done?"