"Forty-nine!"
"Fifty!"
"Do you know what I am wondering?" Louison said suddenly to the child whimpering in her clutch. "How strange it must feel to be there."
All at once, releasing the frightened Jeanneton, she advanced toward the guillotine, as though irresistibly sucked into the maelstrom, stopped, drew her hand across her forehead, then, facing the crowd, flung away her basket of flowers and shouted:
"Vive le Roi!"
In an instant she was surrounded, while everywhere the cries went up:
"She is mad!"
"She is drunk!"
"We have seen it for weeks."