Coursegol's eyes followed hers. She was not mistaken. She was standing in a pool of blood, and not far off lay a body that the crowd had trampled upon only a few moments before.
"But where are we?" murmured the terrified Coursegol.
The man to whom he had previously spoken drew a little nearer and said:
"You are, perhaps, a hundred paces from the prison where they executed the prisoners scarcely an hour ago."
Then, drawing still nearer, so that no one save Coursegol could hear him, he added:
"Advise that young girl not to cry out again as she did just now. If some of these fanatics had heard her, she would have fared badly!"
At that very moment, the crowd resumed its march. The man disappeared. When Coursegol, agitated by these horrors which were so new to him, turned again to speak to Dolores, he saw that she had fainted in his arms. The poor man glanced despairingly about him. Suddenly his eyes fell upon a sign hanging over a shop on the opposite side of the street. This sign represented a red Phrygian cap upon a white ground, and above it was written in large red letters: "Le Bonnet Rouge." For a quarter of an hour he had been standing directly opposite Bridoul's establishment. He uttered a cry of joy, lifted Dolores in his strong arms, and, in a stentorian voice, exclaimed:
"Make way! Make way, good citizens! My daughter has fainted!"
The Provençale costume worn by Dolores deceived the persons who would otherwise have impeded Coursegol's progress.
"He is from Marseilles," some one cried.