“On what?” she echoed, and her glance was troubled with perplexity. Then of a sudden it cleared. “On the love that you have confessed for me,” she cried.
He laughed a short laugh-half amazement, half scorn.
“Mon Dieu!” he exclaimed, tossing his arms to Heaven, “a fine claim that, as I live; a fine argument by which to induce me to place another man in your arms. I am to do it because I love you!”
They gazed at each other now, she with a glance of strained anxiety, he with the same look of half-contemptuous wonder. And then a creaking rumble from below attracted his attention, and he looked round. He moved forward and threw the window wide, letting in with the March air an odd medley of sounds to which the rolling of drums afforded a most congruous accompaniment.
“Look, Citoyenne,” he said, and he pointed out the first tumbril, which was coming round the corner of the Rue St. Honore.
She approached with some shrinking begotten by a suspicion of what she was desired to see.
In the street below, among a vociferating crowd of all sorts and conditions, the black death-cart moved on its way to the guillotine. It was preceded by a company of National Guards, and followed by the drummers and another company on foot. Within the fatal vehicle travelled three men and two women, accompanied by a constitutional priest—one of those renegades who had taken the oath imposed by the Convention. The two women sat motionless, more like statues than living beings, their faces livid and horribly expressionless, so numbed were their intelligences by fear. Of the men, one stood calm and dignified, another knelt at his prayers, and was subject, therefore, to the greater portion of the gibes the mob was offering these poor victims; the third, a very elegant gentleman in a green coat and buckskin breeches, leant nonchalantly upon the rail of the tumbril and exchanged gibes with the people. All five of them were in the prime of life, and, by their toilettes and the air that clung to them, belonged unmistakably to the noblesse.
One glance did Mademoiselle bestow upon that tragic spectacle, then with a shudder she drew back, her face going deathly white.
“Why did you bid me look?” she moaned.
“That for yourself you might see,” he answered pitilessly, “the road by which your lover is to journey.”