After their arrest Philip and Dolores were taken to the nearest station-house and ushered into a room where three persons, arrested like themselves during the evening, were awaiting examination. Unfortunately the official charged with conducting these investigations had already gone home. As he would not return until the next morning, the sergeant of police decided that the prisoners must pass the night there. Some mattresses were spread upon the floor for those who chose to use them. Dolores refused to lie down. She seated herself in a broken-down arm chair which Philip obtained for her, not without considerable difficulty, and declared that she would spend the night there. Philip placed himself on a stool at her feet and thus they waited the break of day.
Their companions were stretched upon their couches fast asleep, and the night, which promised to be heavy with cruel wakefulness and fatigue, passed like some delightful dream.
They could not close their eyes to the fate that was in store for them. Philip had plotted to save the queen; he had returned from his refuge in foreign lands solely for this purpose. By sheltering him, Dolores had become his accomplice. Such crimes would meet with, no indulgence. In the morning they would be interrogated by an official, whose mind had been poisoned against them in advance, and who would show no mercy to their youth. Accused of desiring the overthrow of the Republic and the return of the Bourbons, they would be sent to prison, taken from their cells to the Revolutionary Tribunal, and condemned to the guillotine. Such was the summary mode of procedure during the Reign of Terror. To hope that any exception would be made in their case was folly. All that was left for them, therefore, was to prepare to die. If the prospect of such a fate brought the tears to their eyes at first, it was not because either of them was wanting in courage. No, it was only for the fate that was to befall the other that each wept. But when they had talked together, and learned that they were mutually resigned, their sorrow was appeased; and as if their sentence had already been pronounced, they thought only of making their last hours on earth pass as calmly and sweetly as possible.
"Why should I fear to die?" said Dolores, when Philip tried to encourage her by hopes in which he himself had not the slightest confidence. "Death has terrors only for those who leave some loved one behind them; but when I am gone, who will be left to mourn for me? Antoinette? Have I not for a long time been the same as dead to her? I can leave the world without creating a void in any heart, without causing any one a pang. Hence I can, without regret, go to seek the eternal rest for which I have sighed so long."
"Have you truly longed for death?" asked Philip.
"I have seen so many loved ones fall around me," replied Dolores, "my eyes have witnessed so many sorrows, I have suffered so much, and my life since my happy childhood has been so unspeakably lonely and sad that I have often and often entreated God to recall me to Himself."
"But, Dolores, if you had only listened to me when I pleaded in vain, if you had but placed your hand in mine, what misery we should have been spared."
"It would not have averted our misfortunes."
"No; but we might have borne them together, and after our sorrows found consolation in each other."
"I could not be your wife."