"Quite correct, Citizens." Then, with a glance around, "But what of this demoiselle? There is no mention of her that I can see."
Lenoir laughed and swore.
"Eh," he said, "she was all for coming, and I dare say a whiff of the prison air, which the old Citoyenne found so trying, will do her no harm."
Bault shook a doubtful head, and Renard threw himself with zeal into the role of patriot, animated at once by devotion to the principles of liberty, and loyalty to law and order.
"No, no, Lenoir; no, no, my friend. Everything must be done in order. The Citoyenne sees now what comes of treason and plots. Let her be warned in time, or she will be coming back for good. For this time there is no accusation against her."
He spoke loudly, hand in vest, and felt himself every inch a Roman; but his magniloquence was entirely lost on Mademoiselle, for, with a cry of dismay, she caught her cousin's hand.
"Oh, Messieurs, let me stop! Madame is my guardian, my place is with her!"
Mme. de Montargis looked surprised, but she interrupted the girl with energy.
"Silence then, Aline! What should a young girl do in La Force? Fi donc, Mademoiselle!"—as the soft, distressed murmur threatened to break out again—"you will do as I tell you. Mme. de Maillé will receive you; go straight to her at the Hotel de Maillé. Present my apologies for not writing to her, and—
"Sacrebleu!" thundered Lenoir furiously, "this is not Versailles, where a pack of wanton women may chatter themselves hoarse. Send the young one packing, Bault, and lock these people up. Are the Deputies of the Commune to stand here till nightfall listening to a pair of magpies? Silence, I say, and march! The old woman and the young one, both of you march, march!"
He laid a large dirty hand on Mlle. de Rochambeau's shoulder as he spoke, and pushed her towards the door. As she passed through it she saw her cousin delicately accepting M. de Sélincourt's proffered arm, whilst her left hand, flashing with its array of rings, still held the sweet pomander to her face. Next moment she was in the street.
Her first thought was for the fiacre which had conveyed them to the prison, but to her despair it had disappeared, and there was no other vehicle in sight.
As she stood in hesitating bewilderment, she was aware of the sound of approaching wheels, and looking up she saw three carriages coming, one behind the other, at a brisk pace. There were three priests in the first, one of them so old that all the solicitous assistance of the two younger men was required to get him safely down the high step and through the gate. In the second were two ladies, whose faces seemed vaguely familiar. Was it a year or only an hour ago that they had laughed and jested at Mme. de Montargis' brilliant gathering? They looked at her in the same half uncomprehending manner, and passed on. The last carriage bore the De Maillé crest, but a National Guard occupied the box-seat in place of the magnificent coachman Aline had seen the day before, when Mme. de Maillé had taken her old friend's daughter for a drive through Paris.
The door of the chariot opened, and Mme. De Maillé, pale, almost fainting, was helped out. She looked neither to right nor left, and when Aline started forward and would have spoken, the National Guard pushed her roughly back.
"Go home, go home!" he said, not unkindly; "if you are not arrested, thank the saints for it, for there are precious few aristocrats as lucky to-day"; and Aline shrank against the wall, dumb with perturbation and dismay.
As in a dream she listened to the clang of the prison gate, the roll of departing wheels, and it was only when the last echo died away that the mist which hung about her seemed to clear, and she realised that she was alone in the deserted street.
Alone! In all her nineteen years she had never been really alone before. As a child in her father's château, as a girl in her aristocratic convent, she had always been guarded, sheltered, guided, watched. She had certainly never walked a yard in the open street, or been touched by a man's hand, as the Commissioner Lenoir had touched her a few minutes since. She felt her shoulder burn through the thin muslin fichu that veiled it so discreetly, and the blood ran up, under her delicate skin, to the roots of the curling hair, where gold tints showed here and there through the lightly sprinkled powder.
It was still very hot, though so late in the afternoon, and the sun, though near its setting, shot out a level ray or two that seemed to make palpable the strong, brooding heat of the evening.
Aline felt dazed, and so faint that she was glad to support herself against the rough prison wall. When she could control her trembling thoughts a little, she began to wonder what she should do. She had only been a week in Paris, she knew no one except her cousin, the Vicomte, and Mme. de Maillé, and they were in prison—they and many, many more. For the moment these frowning walls stood to her for home, or all that she possessed of home, and she was shut outside, in a dreadful world, full of unknown dangers, peopled perhaps with persons who would speak to her as Lenoir had done, touch her even—and at that she flushed again, shuddered and looked wildly round.
A very fat woman was coming down the street—the fattest woman Mlle. de Rochambeau had ever seen, yes, fatter even than Sister Josèphe, she considered, with that mechanical detachment of thought which is so often the accompaniment of great mental distress.
She wore a striped petticoat and a gaily flowered gown, the sleeves of which were rolled up to display a pair of huge brown arms. She had a very broad, sallow face, and little pig's eyes sunk deep in rolls of crinkled flesh. Aline gazed at her, fascinated, and the woman returned the look. In truth, Mlle. de Rochambeau, with her rose-wreathed hair, her delicate muslin dress, her fichu trimmed with the finest Valenciennes lace, her thin stockings and modish white silk shoes, was a sufficiently arresting figure, when one considered the hour and the place. The fat woman hesitated a moment, and in that moment Mademoiselle spoke.
"Madame——"
It was the most hesitating essay at speech, but the woman stopped and swung her immense body round until she faced the girl.
"Eh bien, Ma'mselle," she said in a thick, drawling voice.
Mademoiselle moistened her dry lips and tried again.
"Madame—I do not know—can you tell me—oh! you look kind, can you tell me what to do?"
"What to do, Ma'mselle?"
"Oh yes, Madame, and—and where to go?"
"Where to go, Ma'mselle?"
"Yes, Madame."
"But why, Ma'mselle?"
When anything terrible happens to the very young, they are unable to realise that the whole world does not know of their misfortune. Thus to Mlle. de Rochambeau it appeared inconceivable that this woman should be in ignorance of so important an event as the arrest of the Marquise de Montargis and her friends. It was only when, to a puzzled expression, the woman added a significant tap of the gnarled forefinger upon the heavy forehead, and, with a shrug of voluminous shoulders, prepared to pass on, that it dawned upon her that here perhaps was help, and that it was slipping away from her for want of a little explanation.
"Oh, Madame," she exclaimed desperately, "do listen to me. I am Mlle. de Rochambeau, and it is only a week since I came to Paris to be with my cousin, the Marquise de Montargis, and now they have arrested her, and I have nowhere to go."
A sound of voices came from behind the great gate of the prison.
"Walk a little way with me," said the fat woman abruptly. "There will be more than you and me in this conversation if we loiter here like this. Continue, then, Ma'mselle—you have nowhere to go? But why not to your cousin's hotel then?"
"My cousin would have had me do so, but the Commissioners would not permit it. Everything must be sealed up they said, the servants all driven out, and no one to come and go until they had finished their search for treasonable papers. My cousin is accused of corresponding with Austria on behalf of the Queen," Mlle. de Rochambeau remarked