"Tell me, is there any more room in the prisons, or are they filled up with cursed aristocrats?"
Jeanne held her breath. Was Mercier playing a part for her greater security? How well he played it!
"There'll be room for you and your friends," laughed a man, "or they'll make room by cutting off a few heads. It's very easy."
"There's more demand for heads than supply," growled another. "There's some calling themselves patriots that might be spared, I say."
Drumming heels greeted this opinion.
"Very like," Mercier answered. "Shouldn't wonder if I could throw this bottle and hit one or two at this moment, but I'm thinking of emigrés."
A savage growl was the answer.
"They're safe over the frontier, aren't they?" laughed Mercier. "They won't bring their heads to Paris to pleasure Madame Guillotine, will they? No," cried Mercier, clasping a bottle by the neck and striking the table with it so that it smashed and the red wine ran like blood. "No, they think they're safer where they are. The only way is to fetch them back. Lie to them, cheat them until we get them in France. Then—"
He slapped his hands onto the table, into the spilled wine, then held them up and laughed as the drops fell from his finger ends. His meaning was clear.
"Bring them back, Citizen Mercier, and you'll be the first man in Paris," said one.