Danton had got a gallant white mount, the Captain was on a noble black Arabian charger; the others had leaped astride their ever ready army steeds––the ride with the reprieve was in full course!
CHAPTER XXVII
THE FAREWELL
Louise, guided by her faithful attendant Pierre, had left the courtroom directly after the condemnation. Leaning heavily upon him, the blind girl had staggered out, or pressed by the awful knowledge that her sister Henriette was doomed to die. “Oh, take me to her!” she had cried.
There was only one thing to do: to follow the route of the death tumbrils, in the slight hope of overtaking her. The crippled Pierre could not walk fast, and the steps of Louise had to be most carefully directed. Now and again Pierre could see the death carts a long way ahead, he tried to hasten their steps, but presently the transports of death were out of sight again.
A traffic tie-up and street delay that halted the tumbrils just beyond the scene of the bacchanalian Feast of Reason, gave them their opportunity. Here the revelers had burlesqued Henriette as the “Woman of Sorrows,” and here the guardsman had thrown off the chaplet and rebuked the crowd.