She put her hands before her face and sank back upon the pillows, sobbing. Simon shook his head and heaved a deep sigh. "It is not that," murmured he; "it is not from that, doctor! The thing is, that Jeanne Marie has no work and no exercise, and that she is going to wreck, because we are compelled to live here as kings and aristocrats used to live, without labor and occupation, and without doing any more than to nurse our fancies. We shall all die of this, I tell you!"
"But if you know this, citizen, why do you not give up your situation? Why do you not petition the authorities to dismiss you from this service, and give you something else to do?"
"I have done that twice already," answered Simon, bringing his fist down upon the table near the bed so violently that the bottles of medicine standing there were jerked high into the air. "Twice already have I tried to be transferred to some other duty, and the answer has been sent back, that the country orders me to stand at my post, and that there is no one who could take my place."
"That is very honorable and flattering," remarked the physician.
"Yes, but very burdensome and disagreeable," answered Simon. "We are prisoners while holding these honorable and flattering posts. We can no more leave the Temple than Capet can, for, since his father died, and the crazy legitimists began to call him King Louis XVII., the chief magistrate and the Convention have been very anxious. They are afraid of secret conspiracies, and consider it possible that the little prisoner may be taken away from here by intrigue. We have to watch him day and night, therefore, and are never allowed to leave the Temple, lest we should meet with other people, and lest the legitimists should make the attempt to get into our good graces. Would you believe, citizen doctor, that they did not even allow me to go to the grand festival which the city of Paris gave in honor of the taking of Toulan! While all the people were shouting, and having a good time, Jeanne Marie and I had to stay here in this good-for- nothing Temple, and see and hear nothing of the fine doings. And this drives the gall into my blood, and it will make us both sick, and it is past endurance!"
"I believe that you are right, citizen," said the physician, thoughtfully. "Yes, the whole trouble of your wife comes from the fact that she is here in the Temple, and if she must be shut up here always she will continue to suffer."
"Yes, to suffer always, to suffer dreadfully," groaned Jeanne Marie. Then, all at once, she raised herself up and turned with a commanding bearing to her husband. "Simon," she said, "the doctor shall know all that I suffer. He shall examine my breast, and the place where I have the greatest pain; but in your presence I shall say nothing."
"Well, well, I will go," growled Simon. "But I think those are pretty manners!"
"They are the manners of a respectable and honorable woman," said the doctor, gravely—"a woman who does not show the pains and ailments of her body to any one excepting her physician. Go, go, Citizen Simon, and you will esteem your good wife none the less for not letting you hear what she has to say to her old physician."
"No, certainly not," answered Simon, "and that you may both see that I am not curious to hear what you have to say to one another, I will go with the youngster up to the platform and remain a whole hour with him."