CHAPTER XXVIII
The abbe had been right in feeling he could trust the officers to whose care he had confided Maurice.
Finding their entreaties would not induce him to leave the citadel, they seized him and literally carried him away. He made the most desperate efforts to escape; each step was a struggle.
“Leave me!” he exclaimed; “let me go where duty calls me. You only dishonor me in pretending to save me.”
His agony was terrible. He had thrown himself headlong into this absurd undertaking, and now the responsibility of his acts had fallen upon his father. He, the culprit, would live, and his innocent father would perish on the guillotine. It was to this his love for Marie-Anne had led him, that radiant love which in other days had smiled so joyously.
But our capacity for suffering has its limits.
When they had carried him to the room in the hotel where his mother and Marie-Anne were waiting in agonized surprise, that irresistible torpor which follows suffering too intense for human endurance, crept over him.
“Nothing is decided yet,” the officers answered in response to Mme. d’Escorval’s questions. “The cure will hasten here as soon as the verdict is rendered.”
Then, as they had promised not to lose sight of Maurice, they seated themselves in gloomy silence.
The house was silent. One might have supposed the hotel deserted. At last, a little before four o’clock, the abbe came in, followed by the lawyer to whom the baron had confided his last wishes.