Their hands touched upon the parapet, they looked afar over the city. “Babylon—”
“Rome and an amphitheatre there—O the children down below!”
They sat there long, watching as from a tower head. A meteor gleamed. “I think that soon we shall leave this house that we have loved. The city maddens more and more. We shall not escape accusation.”
“No.... Prison—death—life again!”
The suns wheeled in space. The invisible centres indrew and outflung.
Three nights after this they were taken. Accused of plots—known to have succoured Foes. They came before judges who once had had some knowledge of them, but in delirium old knowledges pass, and it made no difference. But the essential unity of the two so impressed itself that none seemed to think of parting them. Together they came into prison.
Choked were the prisons of Paris. Space once unused was brought into requisition, corridors and vacant guardrooms, rooms not meant for prisoners, rooms looking through fair-sized windows upon courtyards. Prisoners went every day from prison to death, but immediately more prisoners filled their places. Jean and Espérance looked with others out of fair-sized windows; with others were let to move about in a small courtyard, Patriot-guarded.
One great tree stood in this yard and underneath had been placed heavy benches. Here, through much of the day, might sit the prisoners.
None knew, in the unreason of the time, why some scarce touched prison before the tumbrils came for them, taking them away to the place of death, and why some were left so long in prison. Some were left so long that in a strange and piteous way the place grew homelike. In this prison a duster of persons were so kept from week to week, from month to month.
There was a group.... None knew why after long crowding this prison should now by degrees be emptied, leaving at last a handful. None knew why it did not at once fill again, nor why these few were left like shades or prophecies, in the comfortless rooms, in the sombre courtyard, under the sombre tree.