"Oh, sister, I am suffocating with anxiety," she said. "I feel that this hour is to decide the lives of us all, and it seems to me as if Death were already stretching out his cold hand toward me. We are lost, and my son, my unhappy son, will never wear any other than the martyr's crown, and—"
The queen was silent, for just then the tower-clock began to strike, slowly, peacefully, the hour of six! The critical moment! The lamplight must come now! If it were Toulan, they might be saved. Some unforeseen occurrence might have prevented his coming before; he might have borrowed the suit of the bribed lamplighter in order to come to them. There was hope still—one last, pale ray of hope!
Steps upon the corridor! Voices that are audible!
The queen, breathless, with both hands laid upon her heart, which was one instant still, and then beat with redoubled rapidity, listened with strained attention to the opening of the door of the anteroom. Princess Elizabeth approached her, and laid her hand on the queen's shoulder. The two children, terrified by some cause which they could not comprehend, clung to the hand and the body of their mother, and gazed anxiously at the door.
The steps came nearer, the voices became louder. The door of the anteroom is opened—and there is the lamp-lighter. But it is not Toulan—no, not Toulan! It is the man who comes every day, and the two children, are with him as usual.
A heavy sigh escaped from the lips of the queen, and, throwing her arms around the dauphin with a convulsive motion, she murmured:
"My son, oh, my dear son! May God take my life if He will but spare thine!"
Where was Toulan? Where had he been all this dreadful day? "Where was Fidele the brave, the indefatigable?
On the morning of the day appointed for the flight, he left his house, taking a solemn leave of his Marguerite. At this parting hour he told her for the first time that he was going to enter upon the great and exalted undertaking of freeing the queen and her children, or of dying for them. His true, brave young wife had suppressed her tears and her sighs to give him her blessing, and to tell him that she would pray for him, and that if he should perish in the service of the queen, she would die too, in order to be united with him above.
Toulan kissed the beaming eyes of his Marguerite with deep fooling, thanked her for her true-hearted resignation, and told her that he had never loved her so much as in this hour when he was leaving her to meet his death, it might be, in the service of another lady.