The cat squalled, but Madame Berthier disregarded its cries. She laughed and glared at her husband, with her head bent forward, and her grey dishevelled hair falling over her breast and covering the cat.
'If you prefer it,' pursued Berthier, 'there is a strong stanchion in the window, quite capable of supporting your weight, and you could with the greatest facility extemporise a rope, surely out of a coverlet, torn up, or even a garter.'
'No,' shouted madame; 'no, not that way.'
'Then allow me to recommend a fragment of crockery. I have known a man hack through his windpipe with a sharp potsherd; and what man has done, woman may do.'
'No,' screamed the leaden woman; 'not so.'
'Then in the name of wonder, how?'
'Ah-ha!' she cried, advancing towards him, and throwing up the cat into the air and catching it, and swinging it above her head, and then bringing it back to its former position. 'Ah! have you never heard of pardons, of orders for release granted by the king?'
'I allow that I have; but I must assure you, dear Madame Plomb, that there is not the remotest chance of your obtaining one.'
'Not if Gabrielle pleads on her knees with the queen? Gabrielle loves me; she will do that, she has come to Paris on purpose to do that. She has got friends who will help her—we shall see! The queen is good, Gabrielle is earnest. We shall see.'