“That’s for you to say. We only know that you have prisoners,” answered the sergeant.
“Then, if you will have it so, one may possibly be a general, and the other an admiral, and the sooner they are lodged in the Bastille, the better for the safety of France,” answered the dame, laughing. “I am a loyal Frenchwoman, and can cry ‘Vive le Roi!’ ‘Vive la France!’ with all my heart.”
Jack and Bill, who had quaked at the thoughts of being made prisoners by the soldiers, now began to have better hope of escaping.
The sergeant, however, was not to be deceived by Dame Turgot’s manner.
“Come, come, I must search your house, notwithstanding. For that purpose I was sent, and I must perform my duty,” he said; and he hunted round the room.
“Now let us look into your room;” and the soldiers, entering, began poking about with their bayonets, running them under the bed, and through the bedding, in a way likely to kill anybody concealed.
Jeannette’s little room was visited and treated in the same manner.
“And what’s this room?” asked the sergeant, pointing to the boys’ room.
“That? That is a closet,” answered the dame; “or if you like it, the general and admiral are both there fast asleep, but I am unwilling to disturb them.”
She said this in a laughing tone, as if she were joking.