CAMILLE. Pleasant idea! [They all laugh.] Why don't you look, Hérault? Aren't you interested? You seem sad? What are you thinking about? [The uproar becomes fainter.]
HÉRAULT. I was thinking, Camille, that Anacharsis is thirty-eight, and Hebert thirty-five—your age, Philippeaux; and Vincent twenty-seven, six years younger than I—and you, Desmoulins.
CAMILLE. True. [He suddenly becomes serious, leaving the window and coming to the center of the room. He stands still an instant, his chin in his hand.]
LUCILE [still at the window]. How it rains! Too bad!
CAMILLE [put out]. Come away from the window, Lucile. You'll catch cold.
LUCILE [closing the window, comes into the room with the baby, singing to herself:]
"Come quick, little shepherdess, gather your sheep:
The rain is beginning to fall,
And bring them back safe to the sheepfold again;
Come quick, or you'll lose them all!"
CAMILLE. Lucile, Lucile, how can you sing that song! I never hear it without thinking that the poet who wrote it is now languishing in prison.
LUCILE. Fabre? That's so. Our poor Eglantine. They shut him up in the Luxembourg, sick as he was! Oh, well, he'll come out.
HÉRAULT. Pur troppo!