The Marquis made no denial; his silence was confirmation and he meant it to be; he knew that he was face to face with the end and he was for no further subterfuge; he had tasted already of the depths of humiliation, he was enduring the extreme of bitterness; there was nothing further to lose or gain in this world for Marie Jean Nicolas de Caritat.
Presently, while some were arguing about his identity, he said in his rough broken voice, with the clear accent that they hated–
“I am Condorcet. Make an end of it.”
They had no more doubts; his face and his voice had betrayed him more completely even than his twelve eggs and his Latin Horace; they were elated at the capture of a man so long unsuccessfully searched for; they drank together, congratulating each other.
Only the woman serving them noticed the prisoner–noticed the cords cutting his wrists, the drop of pain on his brow, the effort he was making to keep upright on his feet.
In a dim, vague way she was aware of the mental torture he was enduring, compared to which the torture of cord and bleeding feet was slight; she felt that this was a proud man enduring the extremity of humiliation and that no more awful bitterness could be imagined in this world.
“He suffers,” she said under her breath, “he suffers.”
Presently they started; four men and the two from Bourg-la-Reine, towards which town’s prison they turned.
Condorcet was in the middle; the four with the prisoner went on foot, the others on horseback.
Strange thoughts came to the Marquis de Condorcet as he walked bound between his four rude guards, as he walked painfully, dragging his fatigued body on bleeding feet along the hot dusty high-road that led to his prison.