the table, over the benches, wailing out their desperate loss and misery.

Madame made her way to me. smile had not left her mouth.

The strange

your face."

"You were on the list. I saw it in
"I was at the bottom-the very last."
"But how?"

"As Cabochon struggled with me, I turned my name down and tore it off.”

"But the number?"

"It tallied.

66

It was enough for him."

'They must find it out-to-morrow, when the prisoners are arraigned."

"Probably. And in the meantime we will drink to our poor Gardel's acquittal."

"No," she said, shrinking back, with an extraordinary look. "If I wish him well, I wish him eternal forgetfulness."

It was the evening of the day succeeding. Shorn of our partners in "Quadrille," Madame and I had been playing "Piquet.”

We were only two, but the four lights flickered in their bottles.

La Marquise de Kercy had been musing. Suddenly she looked up. Her eyes were full of an inhuman mockery.

"The candles!" she said, with a little laugh. "We are no longer using them. To save my pocket, François ! "

Pouf! a candle went out-another, another, an

other; between each the fraction of time occupied by something unseen moving round systematically.

I started to my feet with a suppressed cry.

One or two sitting near us complained of this churlish economy of wax. They imagined I was the culprit.

"Madame!" I muttered.

disposed!"

"Look! she is in

Her face was white and dreadful, like a skull. Hearing my voice she sat up.

"So! He has been guillotined!" she said.

She articulated with difficulty, swallowing and panting without stop.

to forget than I.

"M. Thibaut, it is true, then, they say! But it was he made me kill the child. He has more need Is it not appalling? If I tell have learnt to fear, they will surely spare me. I cannot subscribe to their doctrines-that Club of the Cordeliers. If I tell them so-Danton being gone

them now how I

Her voice tailed off into a hurry of pitiful sobs and cries. I welcomed the entrance of Cabochon with his list.

Her name was first on it.

As we stood arisen, dreading some hideous scene, she fell silent quite suddenly, got to her feet, and walked to the door with a face of stone.

'Death is an interruption.'

'Ma demeure sera bientôt le néant.'

Which could one hope for her, pondering only that delirious outcry from her lips?

Possibly, indeed, she had been mad from first to last.

I had time to collect my thoughts, for-from whatever cause-Citizen Tinville had, it appeared, overlooked me.

189

CHAPTER XI.

PYRAMUS AND THISBE.

I was taking exercise one forenoon in the yard of the prison. It was the last black "Prairial" of the "Terror" the month, like the girl La Lune, once dedicate to Mary — and its blue eyes curiously scrutinised, as Cleopatra's of old, the processes amongst us slaves of that poison that is called despair.

As for myself, I yet a little consorted with Hope -the fond clinging mistress I had dreaded to find banished with the rest of the dear creatures whose company had long now been denied us;-for five months had passed since my incarceration, and I was still, it seemed, forgotten.

I trod the flags-fifty paces hither and thither. Going one way, I had always before my eyes the frowzy stone rampart and barred windows of the prison. Going the other, an execrable statue of M. Rousseau-surmounting an altar to Liberty, the very cement of which was marbled with the blood of the massacres-closed my perspective. To my

either hand was a lofty wall-the first giving upon the jailers' quarters; the second dividing the men's yard from that in which the women were permitted to walk; and a foul open sewer, tunnelled through the latter about its middle, traversed the entire area, and offered the only means by which the sexes could now communicate with each other.

"M. Thibaut," said a voice at my ear; and a gentleman, detaching himself from the aimless and loitering crowd of prisoners, adapted his pace to mine and went with me to and fro.

I knew this oddity-M. the Admiral de St Prest -though he had no recognition of me. That, however, was small wonder. By this time I was worse than a sans-culotte, by so much as that my bareness was suggested rather than revealed. My face was sunk away from my eyes, like soft limestone from a couple of ammonites; my ribs were. loose hoops on a decayed cask; laughter rattled in my stomach like a pea in a whistle. Besides, I had come, I think, to be a little jealous of my title to neglect, for I had made that my grievance against Fate.

Nevertheless, M. de St Prest and I had been slightly acquainted once upon a time, and it had grieved me to see this red month marked by the advent in La Force of the dubious old fop.

He had been a macaroni of Louis XV.'s Court, and the ancient rôle he had never learnt to forego. The poor puppies of circumstance—the fops of a more recent date, to whom the particular cut of a