“I will see you in the morning,” he answered, “before ... I go. At eight.”
“It must be earlier,” she said, not yet releasing him.
“It shall be earlier, by half-an-hour.”
“Promise me.”
He repeated his promise, and the two women turned to the great oaken, nail-studded door; helping the fainting girl, and taking the child by the hand, they went out to the winding stair of stone. It was a little after ten.
When the iron outer door had shut and he knew the women and the children to be above, out of hearing, Louis turned to his guards and gave this order, that, in spite of what he had said, the women should not be told in the morning of his departure, for that neither he nor they could suffer it.
Then he went into the turret chamber where the Priest was, and said: “Let me address myself to the unique affair.”
But above, from the room whose misery could just be heard, the Queen, when she had put her boy to bed and kissed him bitterly, threw herself upon her own bed all dressed, and throughout the darkness of the whole night long her daughter could hear her shuddering with cold and anguish.
That night there was a murmur all around the Tower, for very many in Paris were watching, and through the drizzling mist there came, hour by hour, the distant rumble of cannon, and the sharp cries of command, and men marching by companies up the narrow Temple lane.
It was the very January dark, barely six of the morning, when a guard from the King’s room came up the stair. The Queen from above heard him coming. Her candle was lit—her fixed gaze expected him.... He entered, but as he spoke her heart failed her: he had not come for the summons, he had but come for the King’s book of prayers. She waited the full hour until seven struck in the steeples of the town, and the pale light began to grow: she waited past the moment of her husband’s promise, till eight, till the full day—but no one came. Still she sat on, not knowing what might not have come between to delay their meeting: doors opening below, steps coming and going on the stairs, held all her mind. But no one sent for her, no one called her. It was nine when a more general movement made her half hope, half fear. The sound of that movement, which was the movement of many men, passed downward to the first storeys, to the ground, and was lost. An emptiness fell upon the Tower. Then she knew that her hope had departed.