“Come,” she said to him in a tremulous and affectionate voice, “come, we are waiting for you.”
The man raised his head, cast a sombre glance upon the nun, and made no reply. She felt as if a garment of ice had fallen upon her, and she said no more; at his aspect the gratitude and curiosity expired in all their hearts. He was perhaps less cold, less taciturn, less terrible, than he appeared to those hearts, the exaltation of whose feelings disposed to outpourings of friendliness. The three poor prisoners, understanding that the man desired to remain a Stranger to them, resigned themselves. The priest fancied that he detected upon the Stranger’s lips a smile that was promptly repressed the moment he saw the preparations that had been made to receive him. He heard the mass, and prayed; but he disappeared after having responded negatively to a few words of polite invitation upon the part of Mademoiselle de Langeais to partake of the little collation they had prepared.
After the ninth of Thermidor, the nuns and the Abbé de Marolles were able to go about Paris without incurring the least danger. The first errand of the old priest was to a perfumer’s shop, at the sign of La Reine des Fleurs, kept by Citizen and Citizeness Ragon, formerly perfumers to the Court, who had remained faithful to the royal family, and of whose services the Vendeans availed themselves to correspond with the princes and the royalist committee in Paris. The abbé, dressed according to the style of that epoch, was standing on the doorstep of that shop, between Saint-Roch and Rue des Frondeurs, when a crowd which filled the Rue Saint-Honoré prevented him from going out.
“What is it?” he asked Madame Ragon.
“It is nothing,” she replied; “just the tumbril and the executioner, going to the Place Louis XV. Ah, we saw him very often last year; but to-day, four days after the anniversary of the twenty-first of January, we can look at that horrible procession without distress.”
“Why so?” said the abbé. “It is not Christian, that which you say.”
“Eh, it’s the execution of the accomplices of Robespierre. They defended themselves as long as they could, but they’re going now themselves where they have sent so many innocents.”
The crowd passed like a flood. Over the sea of heads, the Abbé de Marolles, yielding to an impulse of curiosity, saw standing on the tumbril the man who, three days before, had listened to his mass.
“Who is that?” he said, “that man who——”
“That is the headsman,” replied Monsieur Ragon, calling the executioner of the great by his monarchical name.