"Twenty-one."
At each execution a murmur wandered through the crowd—a conventional, listless, slurred cry:
"Vive la Nation!"
Louison, never still, moved among the tricoteuses, nodding and chatting. As each hum announced the arrival of a victim on the scaffold she turned for a momentary, prying glance; then, without interest, wheeling about, she cried her cockades, seeking in the crowd a likely customer.
Absorbed in the girl, marveling at the strange and terrible forces that drew her back to the parent scaffold, Dossonville fell into so deep an abstraction that it cost him his concealment. Before he could retire with the departing crowd, Louison, perceiving him, had hastened to his side.
"What happened last night?" she said, with an imperious gesture. "What did you say to my mother?"
"How do you know I saw her?" he said, unable to control a slight movement of recoil.
"I know it. What happened?" she demanded impatiently. "I was there this morning, but she was gone—gone during the night. What passed between you?"
"You have been misinformed."