Cyrène, when she found herself in darkness, had a confused idea that she was waking from a dream and lying in her bed at the house in the Rue Honoré. Under that impression she drew a breath of relief. A curse from a woman's voice somewhere near by made her realise the truth; the cry of Dominique, "They have finished me!" and the circumstances of his disappearance from her side returned vividly, and her heart sickened. But misery is like a thermometer; after reaching a particular degree it can fall but slightly lower. The death of Dominique only benumbed her brain. Her next impression was that this place in which she lay must be a dungeon, and as her eyes could make out nothing whatever in the darkness she concluded that the woman she heard must be a prisoner in an adjoining cell.
In a short time a stealthy step approached. It stopped, a wooden door swung back, and a band of greyish light showed a low room of rough beams without a window. At the door Wife Gougeon peered in, and behind her was the cheerless perspective of the shop, additionally cheerless in the grey of early morning.
"Well, wench, how do you like being a Sans-culotte? You slept too soft in the Old Régime."
Cyrène had not noticed how she had been sleeping; she now saw that her bed was a pile of straw on a box.
"Get up, you sow, and sweep my floor!" exclaimed the ragman's wife. "Get up!"
Cyrène's first instinct was to lie still in tacit disdain. The recollection of Germain, however, crossed her mind. Rather submit to anything than exasperate his enemies; so she rose, with an effort. Her limbs felt heavy.
"Out now, take this broom, you sot, and sweep the floor."
Cyrène came out and proceeded to brush aside the dust between the piles of metal. Wife Gougeon sat back on a block of wood and laughed, in immense enjoyment.
"So you were a baroness once, one of the heretofores? Well, I like baronesses to do my dirty work for me and Montmorencys for my sweeps. You never thought the people would arrive at this, eh? You thought, you aristocrats, that you could have the fine houses and we could do all the scullery work. How do you like it? Oh, I have dirtier work than that that I will make you do. This is only the commencement. Sweep that board clean, you pig!"
The woman fumed at Cyrène's silence.