"Can he undo the law?" muttered her companion, as now she prepared to find rest by Marion's side. "Are we not condemned to be deported to the other side of the world? How then can he set us free? And, even though free, what use the freedom? We have not the wherewithal to live."
"Bah!" exclaimed Marion, ruthlessly thrusting aside every doubt that might rise in Laure's, or her own, mind as to the possibility of a brighter future ahead: "Bah! we are outside the law's grip now. We can set ourselves free at any moment. Can we not escape from out this city as inhabitants who are fugitives? Or get away----"
"In these prison rags!" Laure exclaimed, recalling to the other's memory how the garb they wore--the coarse black dress and the equally coarse prison linen--was known and would be recognised from one side of France to the other. "Marked, branded as we are Even with the impress of the carcan still on our necks! It is impossible!"
"Is it? Child, you do not understand. Do you not think that in this great, rich house there are countless handsome dresses and vast quantities of women's clothing? We can go forth decked as we choose--even as rich women fleeing from the scourge. Have no fear," the brave, sturdy creature added; "that we cannot depart when we desire. And--leave all--trust all--to me."
"How to live though we should escape? I am fit for nothing. I can do no work: even though I were strong. I know nothing. My uncle reared me too delicately."
"I can do all, I am strong. I will work for both of us. Now sleep."
And they did sleep, lying side by side. Side by side as they had done before when chained together, and as they had trudged along the awful road which led to still more awful horrors than even the route could produce. In the morning Marion arose as the first rays of dawn stole in through the windows of the great room, while thinking at first, ere she was thoroughly awake, that the guardians would come in a moment to curse into consciousness all who still slept, and half dreaming that she was again on the road. Then, she remembered that these men would never trouble her more; that, in a manner of speaking, she and Laure were free. Yet she remembered that their freedom was a ghastly one, and that death was all around them; that the pestilence was slaying a thousand people a day (as she had heard one galley slave say to another); and that, ere they had been in Marseilles many hours, it might lay its hot, poisonous hands on her and her companions.
Laure still slept, and, gazing down upon her, Marion saw how white and worn she was--yet how beautiful still! Upon that beauty nothing which she had yet undergone had had full power of destruction. Neither sun nor rain nor wind, nor the long dreary tramp and the rough, coarse food--not even the sleeping in outhouses and barns, and, sometimes, of necessity, beneath the open heavens and in the cold night wind--could spoil the soft graceful curves of chin or cheek, or alter the features. Burnt black almost, worn to skin and bone, and with, on those features, that look which toil almost ever, and sorrow always, brings, she lay there as beautiful still in all the absolute originality of her beauty as on the day she was supposed to be about to marry one man and had married another.
Looking down upon her, that other woman, that woman whose own life had been so turbulent--and who, like Laure, had been reared among the people but who had, doubtless, never known the refining influences which even such a man as Vandecque could offer to one whom he loved for herself, as well as valued for her loveliness--wept. She wept hot, scalding tears, such as only those amongst us whose lives have been fierce and tempestuous (almost always, alas! because of those fiery passions which Nature has implanted in our hearts, and which, could we but have the arbitrament of them, we would hurl away for ever from us), can weep. Then, slowly, she did that which she could not remember having once done for long past years--not since she was a tiny, innocent child. She sunk first on one knee and then on the other, and so knelt at the side of the sleeping girl, murmuring:
"If I may dare to pray--I--I--who have so outraged Him and all His laws. Yet, what to say--how to frame a prayer? 'Tis years since she who taught me my first one at her knee--since she--ah! pity me, God," Marion broke off, "I know not how to pray."