The soldiers did not make as short work as they expected of Egmont and his crew. For an hour, Jean and Diane, listening in a black and slimy cellar, heard desperate fighting going on around them, the few wretches who remained dying hard, like wild animals at bay. Half a dozen smouldering fires were put out in that time, and the soldiers, at their leisure and without burning anything, finally got possession of the prison of the Mazas.
It was black night, but the sky was still illuminated with a dreadful and appalling glory when Diane and Jean finally crept once more into the blind alley. The soldiers were carrying off a badly wounded man, cursing and denouncing all men and their Maker. It was he who was once the Marquis Egmont de St. Angel.
The officer in command was surprised, if anything could surprise one in those frightful hours, to see a woman in such a place. Diane showed an admirable calmness, and Jean, as usual, had little to say. The jailer, hovering around and seeing Diane, came up cringing.
“This lady will tell you, sir,” he said to the officer, “that I opened the doors of all the cells as soon as I could, fearing a fire.”
“True,” answered Diane, “but why did you tell me that Jean Leroux was shot?”
“Because he told me so himself,” cried the jailer, nervously. “When I showed him the warrant for the shooting of Jean Leroux, he said, ‘I am Jean Leroux,’ and he told me so a dozen times. The Bishop that was in the prison knows the man who was shot. The Bishop has gone back to his cell, because he has nowhere else to go until to-morrow, and if this officer will let us, I will take you to him.”
Ten minutes later, Diane and Jean were in the Bishop’s cell, which was lighted only by a lantern carried by the jailer, for prisoners were not allowed lights.
“Will your Grace bear me out,” said the jailer, who had decided to recognize the Bishop’s dignity, since the Commune was at an end, “that the man who was shot this afternoon gave his name as Jean Leroux?”
“Did he?” cried the Bishop with animation, rising. “Well, then, that man, whatever his name may be, or whatever his life may have been, died nobly.”
A silence which the jailer could not understand prevailed in the cell. The two men and the woman looked at each other with a strange understanding and eloquence in the eyes of all.