“A wise woman once said that I should be a queen and more,” she replied brokenly, “therefore I cannot be going to die—”
“No, no,” repeated the Countess, shaking her blonde head.
The jailer came and roughly separated them. Madame du Barry saw the pallid, dazed face of her companion and heard her shriek as she was thrust into a room and the key turned; then she herself was pushed through an open door and locked in.
She stumbled across the threshold and nearly fell, recovered herself and went straight to the window and looked out.
The window was heavily and closely barred from top to bottom, and faced the other portion of the prison through which she had just come, which was only a few yards distant. A small portion of sky was visible and a small strip of cobbled courtyard; nothing else.
The sky was grey with the sullen snows of November, and the cobbles and the walls were splashed and stained with dark patches; Madame du Barry knew what they were: a few days before the Girondists had been gathered in the chapel of the Concièrgerie and then driven out into the courtyard to be massacred.
She had heard a man say that the blood had been ankle-deep.
A peculiar, terrible and sickening smell filled the prison; she had noticed it as soon as she had stepped down into the dark entrance hall. It was very strong in this room where they had put her. She tried to forget what it was.
“I must think,” she said to herself; “I must think.”