Véronique followed her son's advice. The next morning, full of hope, she once more took the road to the cell. This time, All's Well, reverting to his instincts of independence, did not come with her.
"Keep quite still, mother," said François, in so low a whisper that she could scarcely hear him. "I am very closely watched; and I think there's some one walking up and down in the passage. However, my work is nearly done; the stones are all loosened. I shall have finished in two hours. Have you the ladder?"
"Yes."
"Remove the stones from the window . . . that will save time . . . for really I am frightened about Stéphane . . . . And be sure not to make a noise . . . ."
Véronique moved away.
The window was not much more than three feet from the floor: and the small stones, as she had supposed, were kept in place only by their own weight and the way in which they were arranged. The opening which she thus contrived to make was very wide; and she easily passed the ladder which she had brought with her through and secured it by its iron hooks to the lower ledge.
She was some hundred feet or so above the sea, which lay all white before her, guarded by the thousand reefs of Sarek. But she could not see the foot of the cliff, for there was under the window a slight projection of granite which jutted forward and on which the ladder rested instead of hanging perpendicularly.
"That will help François," she thought.
Nevertheless, the danger of the undertaking seemed great; and she wondered whether she herself ought not to take the risk, instead of her son, all the more so as François might be mistaken, as Stéphane's cell was perhaps not there at all and as perhaps there was no means of entering it by a similar opening. If so, what a waste of time! And what a useless danger for the boy to run!
At that moment she felt so great a need of self-devotion, so intense a wish to prove her love for him by direct action, that she formed her resolution without pausing to reflect, even as one performs immediately a duty which there is no question of not performing. Nothing deterred her: neither her inspection of the ladder, whose hooks were not wide enough to grip the whole thickness of the ledge, nor the sight of the precipice, which gave an impression that everything was about to fall away from under her. She had to act; and she acted.