He stood looking at a young woman who was sitting with the order in her lap, her eyes turned heavenward as if in dumb appeal. Now and then she looked from one man to another, as if help must come.
François glanced at the marquis; he was the center of a laughing group, chatting unconcerned.
"Ciel! has the man no heart?" he murmured. "Why did I save him even for a day? The good God knows. It must make life easy to be like him." The marquis would have been amazed to know that the memory of a white, sad woman's face, and of one heroic hour, had given him a new lease of life.
"Ah, Toto," said the thief to himself, "we held that stair together, he and I." The thought of an uplifting moment overcame him. A sudden reflection that he might have been other than he was flushed his face.
"Ah, my friend Toto, we could have been something; we missed our chance in the world. Well, thou dost think we had better make a fight for it. Life is agreeable, but not here. Let us think. There is one little card to play. Art thou up to it? Yes! I must go now. Thou wilt wait here, and thou wilt not move. In an hour I shall be with thee; and, meanwhile, behold a fine bone. No, not yet, but when I come. Attention, now!"
He turned his back to the prison, took off a shoe, and extracted a paper, which he folded so as to be small and flat. Then he produced a bit of a kid glove he had asked from Mme. Cerise of the Comédie Française. In it he laid the paper, and put the little packet, thus protected, in the dog's mouth. "Keep it," he said. "It is death—it is life." The dog lay down, his sharp black nose on his paws, shut his eyes, and seemed to be asleep. He had done the thing before.
When François entered the corridor he found the keeper.
"Come," said Vaubertrand. "The commissioner is in a bad way, and drunk, too. He is troubled, I think, and the citizens who are outside reproach him that the supply for the guillotine is small, and the prisons full. What have I done to be thus tormented? There will be a massacre. Ciel! I talk too much. I have favored thee. Take care—and thou canst laugh yet." Whereupon François laughed anew, and went after him.
The large hall on the first floor was unusually full. There was much confusion. The great street door, as it was opened wide and shut again in haste, gave a not reassuring glimpse of men in red bonnets roaring the Ça ira. Over all rose the shrill tongues of the women of the markets. A new batch of prisoners was pushed in, the keeper declaring he had no room. Officers of the Committee of Safety untied the hands of the newcomers, and ranged them on stone benches to the left. On the right were those who were called to trial. François stood aside, watchful.
Pierre Despard was waiting, flushed and anxious. As a spy, he had leave from Vaubertrand to descend in order to state his case to Grégoire. He went hither and thither, noisy, foolish, gesticulating. He was now in his alternate mood of excitement, and soon began to elbow his way toward the office.