"A pleasant day, my dear Heloise, for Citizen Toulan will have the watch again. I begged him so long, that he at last promised to exchange with Citizen Pelletan, whose turn regularly comes to- morrow. Pelletan is not well, and it would be very hard for him to sit up there all day, and, besides, he would be dreadfully stupid. It is a great deal pleasanter to have Toulan here with his jokes and jolly stories, and so I begged him to come and take Pelletan's place. He is going to accommodate me and come."
His wife did not answer a word, but broke out in a burst of shrill, mocking laughter, and with her angry black eyes she scrutinized her husband's red, bloated face, as though she were reading him through and through.
"What are you laughing at?" he asked, angrily. "I would like to be beyond hearing when you give way in that style. What are you laughing at?"
"Because I wonder at you, you Jack," she answered sharply. "Because you are determined to make an ass of yourself, and let dust be thrown in your eyes, and put yourself at the disposal of every one who soaps you over with smooth words."
"Come," said Simon, "none of that coarseness! and if you—"
"Hist!" she answered, commandingly. "I will show you at once that I have told you the truth, and that you are making an ass of yourself, or at least that you are on the point of doing so. Now, listen."
The knitter laid her work aside, and had a long conversation in a whisper with her husband. When it ended, Simon stood up wearing a dark look, and walked slowly backward and forward in the little room. Then he stopped and shook his fist threateningly at the room above. "She shall pay for this," he muttered—" by God in heaven! she shall pay for this. She is a good-for-nothing seducer! Even in prison she does not leave off coquetting, and flirting, and turning the heads of the men! It is disgraceful, thoroughly disgraceful, and she shall pay for it! I will soon find means to have my revenge on her!"
During the whole evening Mistress Tison did not leave her place behind the glass door for a moment, and at each stolen glance which the queen cast thither she always encountered the malicious, glaring eyes of the keeper, directed at her with an impudent coolness.
At last came the hour of going to bed—the hour to which the queen looked impatiently forward. At night she was at least alone and unguarded. After the death of the king, it had been found superfluous to trouble the officials with the wearisome night- watches, and they were satisfied, after darkness had set in and the candles were lighted, with locking the three doors which led to the inner rooms.
Did Marie Antoinette weep and moan at night, did she talk with her sister, did she walk disconsolately up and down her room?—the republic granted her the privilege. She could, during the night at least, have a few hours of freedom and of solitude.