Presently she raised her head and gazed in perplexity at Javogues. She half rose, and dragging her body forward, seized the head between her hands, calling anxiously:
"Javogues, Javogues!"
Almost immediately she recoiled, bounding to her feet, her hands to her temples, staring aghast, while the cry was torn from her heart:
"He's dead!"
With a scream she rushed past them out of the room, and fled down-stairs. Dossonville, approaching the bed, looked down upon the body that was Javogues's. He looked and looked, forgetting all else, until Sans-Chagrin impatiently touched his arm. Then, with a start, he came to himself and led the way from the empty room.
XI
NICOLE FORGOES THE SACRIFICE
The Maison Talaru, where Dossonville presented himself the next day, was the strangest of all the strange prisons improvised to suit the needs of the Revolution. Crowded with aristocrats, it remained unmolested, thanks to the enormous sums its lodgers paid for their security. In return, the inmates passed the time in agreeable intercourse, gambling, amusing themselves, and eating well. Schmidt, the jailer, not without a touch of humor, replaced the enormous dogs which attended his confrères by a peaceable lamb, whose neck and feet, decorated with pink bows, never failed to reassure the new arrivals.
Placed in his lucrative position by the aid of Dossonville, Schmidt had nothing to refuse his protector; but, as he was at bottom avaricious, he met him with an anxious query as to the probable duration of Nicole's stay.