“Citizen Fabien!” roared the voice of Balthazar at the door of the cell.
“May I not speak a word with Madame de Charry before you lock us up for the night?” said the Chevalier.
“The Citoyenne Charry has been dead these ten minutes,” answered the brute with his usual bluntness, “and Citizen Fabien will never be locked up here again.”
“Bah!” said the Chevalier, who not only felt sick, but looked so.
“The authorities are at the door, ready to read to you the decree which discharges you from custody. The tribunal is growing tender; it has demanded but three lives today. It sees no ground for accusing you, and it has ordered the Citizen Edmond Thierry to find his way to his father,—if he can. The ungrateful villain nearly threw me on my back as I opened the wicket to set him free.”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said De Fabien, who suddenly recovered both his courage and his colour, “I wish you a good night, and luck like mine. I am now eligible to the bals à la guillotine, for I have had a relative who has been beheaded.”
“Poor Madame de Charry!” exclaimed the sympathetic ladies, as the tears ran down their cheeks with laughing at the Chevalier’s drollery.
“Poor me!” said M. de Bohun, “for now Edmond is gone, who will sew on a button for me, or mend a rent in my clothes?”
ACT II.
The Dean of St. Patrick’s has immortalized an Irish festival of the eighteenth century, by declaring that