THE MARIE ANTOINETTE ROMANCES.
LE CHEVALIER DE MAISON-ROUGE.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: "OH, HOW LONG IT IS SINCE I HAVE SEEN ANY FLOWERS!"
_Drawn and etched by E. Abot._
Chevalier de Maison-Rouge.
]
LE
CHEVALIER DE MAISON-ROUGE.
BY
ALEXANDRE DUMAS.
BOSTON:
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
1897.
_Copyright, 1890, 1894_,
By Little, Brown, and Company.
University Press:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A.
INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
The "Chevalier de Maison-Rouge," though it deals with events subsequent
to those covered by the earlier stories of the Marie Antoinette cycle,
was written at an earlier date. In it we are introduced to a new set of
personages, and see no more of the characters whose fortunes furnish
the fictitious as distinguished from the historical interest of the
earlier stories.
The months which elapsed between the execution of the King and the
appearance in the Place de la Révolution of the ill-fated Marie
Antoinette were thickly strewn with tragedy, particularly after the
final conflict between the Gironde and the Mountain, and the decisive
victory of the latter, resulting in the undisputed supremacy of the
band of men in whom we now see the personification of the Reign of
Terror.
Those portions of the narrative which describe the life of the queen at
the Temple, and subsequently in the Conciergerie, are founded strictly
upon fact. Of the treatment accorded to the little Dauphin by Simon,
who is given much prominence in the story, it need only be said that it
falls far short of the truth as it is to be found in numberless memoirs
and documents. There is nothing in all history more touching and
heart-rending than the fate of this innocent child, who was literally
done to death by sheer brutality in less than two years; nor is there
any one of the excesses committed by the extreme revolutionists which
has done more to cause posterity to fail to realize the vast benefits
which mankind owes to the Revolution, in the face of the unnamable
horrors which were perpetrated in its name.
The noble answer of Marie Antoinette to the unnatural charges brought
against her by Hébert (not Simon) was actually made at her trial.
There is no direct historical authority for the various attempts herein
detailed to effect the escape of the Queen, although rumors of such
were circulating unceasingly. The titular hero of the book is not an
historical personage, nor are Maurice Lindey and Lorin; but the latter
are faithful representatives of a by no means small class of sincere
and devoted republicans who turned aside with shrinking horror from
the atrocities of the Terror.
The mutual heroism of Maurice and Lorin in the final catastrophe
reminds us of the similar conduct of Gaston in the "Regent's Daughter"
when he fails to reach Nantes with the reprieve until the head of one
of his comrades had fallen. Nor can one avoid a thought of Sydney
Carton laying down his life for Charles Darnay, in Charles Dickens's
"Tale of Two Cities," wherein the horrors of the Terror are so vividly
pictured.
One must go far to seek for a more touching and pathetic love-episode
than that of Maurice and Geneviève, whose sinning, if sinning it was,
was forced upon them by the cold and unscrupulous Dixmer in the pursuit
of his one unchangeable idea.
On the 16th of October, 1793, the daughter of the Cæsars lost her life
through the instrumentality of the machine which we saw Cagliostro
exhibit to her in a glass of water at the Château de Taverney more than
twenty years before. Then she was in the bloom of youth and beauty, a
young queen coming to reign over a people who had just begun to realize
their wrongs and their power. To-day she is a woman of thirty-eight,
prematurely aged, but bearing about her still the noble dignity of her
ancient race, and proving anew, as Charles I. had proved, and as her
own husband had proved, that the near approach of death brings forth
the noblest qualities in those of royal lineage.
We cannot better end this brief note than by quoting the characteristic
but powerful apostrophe of Carlyle in his essay upon the "Diamond
Necklace."
"Beautiful Highborn, thou wert so foully hurled low! For if thy being
came to thee out of old Hapsburg dynasties, came it not also (like my
own) out of Heaven? _Sunt lachrymæ rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt._
Oh, is there a man's heart that thinks without pity of those long
months and years of slow-wasting ignominy: of thy birth, soft-cradled
in imperial Schönbrunn, the winds of Heaven not to visit thy face
too roughly, thy foot to light on softness, thy eye on splendor:
and then of thy death, or hundred deaths, to which the guillotine
and Fouquier-Tinville's judgment bar was but the merciful end? Look
_there_, O man born of woman! The bloom of that fair face is wasted,
the hair is gray with care: the brightness of those eyes is quenched,
their lids hang drooping, the face is stony pale, as of one living in
death. Mean weeds, which her own hand has mended, attire the Queen of
the World. The death-hurdle, where thou sittest pale, motionless, which
only curses environ, has to stop; a people, drunk with vengeance, will
drink it again in full draught, looking at thee there. Far as the eye
reaches, a multitudinous sea of maniac heads: the air deaf with their
triumph yell! The living-dead must shudder with yet one other pang: her
startled blood yet again suffuses with the hue of agony that pale face
which she hides with her hands. There is, then, no heart to say, God
pity thee? O think not of these: think of HIM whom thou worshippest,
the Crucified,--who also treading the wine-press _alone_, fronted
sorrow still deeper: and triumphed over it, and made it holy: and built
of it a Sanctuary of Sorrow for thee and all the wretched! Thy path of
thorns is nigh ended. One long last look at the Tuileries, where thy
step was once so light,--where thy children shall not dwell. The head
is on the block: the axe rushes--Dumb lies the World: that wild-yelling
World and all its madness is behind thee."
LIST OF CHARACTERS.
Period, 1793.
Marie Antoinette, }
The Dauphin, } prisoners at the Temple.
Madame Royale, }
The Princess Elizabeth, }
Chevalier de Maison-Rouge, }
M. Dixmer, } engaged in an attempt to
Geneviève, his wife, } rescue the Queen.
Sophie Tison, }
Lieutenant Maurice Lindey, a patriot, in love with Geneviève.
Maximilien-Jean Lorin, his friend.
Santerre, Commandant of the Parisian National Guard.
Simon, a cobbler.
President Harmand, of the Revolutionary Tribunal.
Fouquier-Tinville, the public accuser.
M. Giraud, the city architect.
Chauveau Lagarde, counsel for the Queen.
Jean Paul Marot, }
Robespierre, }
Danton, }
Chénier, } Montagnards.
Hébert, }
Fabre d'Églantine, }
Collot d'Herbois, }
Robert Lindet, }
MM. Vergniaud, Féraud, Brissot, Louvet, }Girondins.
Pétion, Valazé, Lanjuinais, Barbaroux, }
MM. Roland, Servien, Clavières, } of the French Ministry,
Le Brun, and Monge, } August, 1793.
Generals Dumouriez, Miacrinski, } officers commanding the
Steingel, Neuilly, Valence, } French armies on the
Dampierre, and Miranda, } frontiers.
Henriot, Commandant-General of the National Guard.
Citizen Devaux, of the National Guard.
Citizens Tonlan, Lepître, Agricola, } of the Municipal
and Mercevault, } Guard.
Grammont, Adjutant-Major.
Tison, employed at the Temple Prison.
Madame Tison, his wife.
Arthémise, ex-dancer at the opera.
Abbé Girard.
Dame Jacinthe, his servant.
Turgy, an old waiter of Louis XVI., attending the royal family at the Temple.
Muguet, _femme-de-chambre_ of Dixmer.
Madame Plumeau, hostess of an alehouse near the Temple.
Agesilaus, servant to Maurice Lindey.
Aristide, concierge at Maurice's house.
Gracchus, a turnkey at the Conciergerie.
Richard, jailer at the Conciergerie.
Madame Richard, his wife.
Duchesse, }
Gilbert, } Gendarmes at the Conciergerie.
Sanson, the executioner.
CONTENTS.
Chapter Page
I. The Enrolled Volunteers 1
II. The Unknown 13
III. The Rue des Fossés Saint Victor 22
IV. Manners of the Times 30
V. What Sort of Man the Citizen Maurice Lindey was 40
VI. The Temple 46
VII. The Oath of the Gamester 57
VIII. Geneviève 68
IX. The Supper 79
X. Simon the Shoemaker 90
XI. The Billet 100
XII. Love 110
XIII. The Thirty-First of May 141
XIV. Devotion 148
XV. The Goddess Reason 157
XVI. The Prodigal Child 163
XVII. The Miners 171
XVIII. Clouds 182
XIX. The Request 191
XX. The Flower-Girl 200
XXI. The Crimson Carnation 207
XXII. Simon the Censor 215
XXIII. Arthémise 222
XXIV. The Mother and Daughter 231
XXV. The Conspiracy 240
XXVI. The Little Dog Jet 252
XXVII. The Muscadin 263
XXVIII. The Chevalier de Maison-Rouge 273
XXIX. The Patrol 282
XXX. The Password 292
XXXI. The Search 300
XXXII. The Fire 309
XXXIII. The Morrow 322
XXXIV. The Conciergerie 326
XXXV. La Salle des Pas-Perdus 337
XXXVI. The Citizen Théodore 347
XXXVII. The Citizen Gracchus 355
XXXVIII. The Royal Child 361
XXXIX. The Bouquet of Violets 372
XL. The Tavern of Noah's Well 384
XLI. The Registrar of the Minister of War 392
XLII. The Two Billets 399
XLIII. The Preparations of Dixmer 405
XLIV. The Preparations of the Chevalier 412
XLV. The Inquiry 420
XLVI. The Sentence 429
XLVII. The Priest and the Executioner 437
XLVIII. The Cart 445
XLIX. The Scaffold 453
L. The Visit to the Domicile 461
LI. Lorin 466
LII. Sequel to the Preceding 475
LIII. The Duel 482
LIV. The Salle des Morts 490
LV. Why Lorin went out 502
LVI. Long Live Simon! 505
LE
CHEVALIER DE MAISON-ROUGE.
CHAPTER I.
THE ENROLLED VOLUNTEERS.
It was on the evening of the 10th of March, 1793, ten o'clock was
striking from Notre Dame, and each stroke sounding, emitted a sad and
monotonous vibration. Night had fallen on Paris, not boisterous and
stormy, but cold, damp, and foggy. Paris itself at that time was not
the Paris of our day, glittering at night with thousands of reflected
lights,--the Paris of busy promenades, of lively chat, with its riotous
suburbs, the scene of audacious quarrels, and daring crime,-- but a
fearful, timid, busy city, whose few and scattered inhabitants, even
in crossing from one street to another, ran concealing themselves in
the darkness of the alleys, and ensconcing themselves behind their
portes-cochères, like wild beasts tracked by the hunters to their lair.
As we have previously said, it was the evening of the 10th of March,
1793. A few remarks upon the critical situation of the country, which
had produced the changed aspect of the capital, before we commence
stating the events the recital of which form the subject of this
history.
France, by the death of Louis XVI., had become at variance with all
Europe. To the three enemies she had first combated,--that is to say,
Prussia, the Empire, and Piedmont,--were now joined England, Holland,
and Spain. Sweden and Denmark alone preserved their old neutrality,
occupied as they were besides in beholding Catharine II. devastating
Poland.
The state of affairs was truly frightful. France, more respected as a
physical power, but less esteemed as a moral one, since the massacres
of September and the execution of the 21st of January, was literally
blockaded, like a simple town, by the whole of Europe. England was
on our coasts, Spain upon the Pyrenees, Piedmont and Austria on the
Alps, Holland and Prussia to the north of the Pays-Bas, and with one
accord from the Upper Rhine to the Scheldt two hundred and fifty
thousand combatants marched against the Republic. Our generals were
repulsed in every direction. Miacrinski had been obliged to abandon
Aix-la-Chapelle, and draw back upon Liege; Steingel and Neuilly were
driven back upon Limbourg; while Miranda, who besieged Maestricht, fell
back upon Tongres. Valence and Dampierre, reduced to beat a retreat,
did so with a loss of half their number. More than ten thousand
deserters had already abandoned the army, and cleverly scattered
themselves in the interior. At last the Convention, having no hope
except in Dumouriez, despatched courier after courier, commanding him
to quit the borders of the Biesboos (where he was preparing to embark
for Holland), and return to take the command of the army of the Meuse.
Sensitive at heart, like an animate body, France felt at Paris--that is
to say, at its core--each and every blow levelled at it by invasion,
revolt, or treason, even from quarters the most distant. Each victory
was a riot of joy; every defeat an insurrection of terror. It is
therefore easy to comprehend what tumult was produced by the news of
these successive losses which we had just experienced.
On the preceding evening, the 9th of March, they had had at the
Convention a sitting more stormy than usual; all the officers had
received orders to join their regiments at the same time, and Danton,
that audacious proposer of improbable things (but which nevertheless
were accomplished),--Danton mounting the tribune, cried out, "Soldiers
are wanting, say you? Offer Paris an opportunity of saving France.
Demand from her thirty thousand men, send them to Dumouriez; and
not only is France saved, but Belgium is secured, and Holland is
conquered." This proposition had been received with shouts of
enthusiasm, registers had been opened in all the sections, calling
on them to assemble in the evening. Places of public amusement were
closed to avoid all distraction, and the black flag was hoisted at the
Hôtel de Ville, in token of distress. Before midnight, five and thirty
thousand names were inscribed on the registers; only this evening, as
it had before occurred in September, in every section, while inscribing
their names, the enrolled Volunteers had demanded that before their
departure the traitors might be punished.
The traitors were in fact the "contre-revolutionists,"--the hidden
conspirators who from within menaced the Revolution, thus menaced from
without. But as may be easily understood, the word "traitor" extended
to all those to whom the extreme parties who at this period tore
France wished to apply it. The traitors were the weaker party; as the
Girondins were the weakest, the Montagnards decided that the Girondins
must be the traitors.
On the next day, which was the 10th of March, all the Montagnard
deputies were present at the sitting. The Jacobins, armed, filled
the tribunes, after having turned out the women; the mayor presented
himself with the Council of the Commune, confirming the report of
the Commissioners of the Convention respecting the devotedness of
the citizens, but repeating the wish, unanimously expressed the
preceding evening, for a Tribunal Extraordinary appointed to judge
the traitors. The report of the Committee was instantly demanded with
loud vociferations. The Committee met immediately, and in five minutes
afterward Robert Lindet declared that a Tribunal would be formed,
composed of nine judges (independent of all forms, and acquiring proof
by every means), divided into two permanent sections, and prosecuting,
by order of the Convention or directly, all those who were found guilty
in any way of attempting to mislead the people.
This was a sweeping clause, and the Girondins, understanding it as
their death-warrant, rose _en masse_. Death, cried they, rather than
submit to the establishment of this Venetian inquisition.
The Montagnards, in reply to this apostrophe, demanded to put the
matter to the vote in loud tones. "Yes," exclaimed Féraud, "let us
vote to make known to the world the men who are willing to assassinate
innocence under the mask of the law." They voted at length; and against
all expectation the majority decided--(1) that they would have juries;
(2) that these juries should be of equal numbers in the departments;
(3) that they should be nominated by the Convention. At the moment
when these three propositions were approved, loud cries were heard;
but the Convention, accustomed to receive occasional visits from the
populace, inquired their wishes, and were informed in reply that it
was merely a deputation of enrolled Volunteers, who, having dined at
the Halle-au-Blé, demanded to be permitted to display their military
tactics before the Convention.
The doors were opened immediately, and six hundred men, armed with
swords, pistols, and pikes, apparently half-intoxicated, filed off amid
shouts of applause, and loudly demanded the death of the traitors.
"Yes," replied Collot d' Herbois, addressing them, "yes, my friends, we
will save you--you and liberty--notwithstanding their intrigues." These
words were followed by an angry glance toward the Girondins, which
plainly intimated they were not yet beyond reach of danger. In short,
the sitting of the Convention terminated, the Montagnards scattered
themselves among other clubs, running first to the Cordeliers and then
to the Jacobins, proposing to place the traitors beyond the reach of
the law by cutting their throats that very night.
The wife of Louvet resided in the Rue Saint Honoré, near the Jacobins.
She, hearing these vociferations, descended, entered the club, and
heard this proposition; then quickly retraced her steps, and warned
her husband of the impending danger. Louvet, hastily arming himself,
ran from door to door to alarm his friends, but found them all absent;
then fortunately ascertaining from one of the servants they had gone
to Pétion's house, he followed them there. He found them quietly
deliberating over a decree which ought to be presented on the morrow,
and which by a chance majority they hoped to pass. He related what had
occurred, communicated his fears, informed them of the plot devised
against them by the Cordeliers and Jacobins, and concluded by urging
them on their side to pursue some active and energetic measure.
Then Pétion rose, calm and self-possessed as usual, walked to the
window, opened it, looked at the sky, and then extended his hand, which
he drew in covered with moisture. "It rains," said he; "there will be
nothing to-night."
Through this half-opened window the last vibration of the clock was
heard striking ten.
Such were the occurrences of the 10th of March and the evening
preceding it,--occurrences which, in this gloomy obscurity and
menacing silence, rendered the abodes destined to shelter the living
like sepulchres peopled by the dead. In fact, long patrols of the
National Guard, preceded by men marching with fixed bayonets, troops
of citizens, armed at hazard, pushing against each other, gendarmes
closely examining each doorway, and strictly scrutinizing every
narrow alley,--these were the sole inhabitants who ventured to expose
themselves in the streets. Every one instinctively understood that some
unusual and terrible plot was in progress.
The cold and drizzling rain, which had tended so much to reassure
Pétion, had considerably augmented the ill-humor and trouble of these
inspectors, whose every meeting resembled preparation for combat, and
who, after recognizing each other with looks of defiance, exchanged the
word of command slowly and with a very bad grace. One would have said
on seeing them separate and return to their several posts, that they
mutually feared an attack from behind.
On the same evening, when Paris was a prey to one of these panics
(so often renewed that they ought, in some measure, to have become
habitual),--the evening on which the massacre of the lukewarm
revolutionists was secretly debated, who after having voted (with
reservation for the most part) the death of the king, recoiled
to-day before the death of the queen, a prisoner in the Temple, with
her children and her sister-in-law,--a woman, enveloped in a mantle
of lilac printed cotton with black spots, her head almost buried in
her hood, glided along the houses in the Rue Saint Honoré, seeking
concealment under a door-porch, or in the angle of a wall, every time
a patrol appeared, remaining motionless as a statue and holding her
breath till he had passed, and once more pursuing her anxious course
with increased rapidity, till some danger of a similar nature again
compelled her to seek refuge in silence and immobility.
She had already (thanks to the precautions she had taken) travelled
over with impunity part of the Rue Saint Honoré, when at the corner of
the Rue de Grenelle she suddenly encountered, not a body of patrol,
but a small troop of our brave enrolled Volunteers, who, having dined
at the Halle-au-Blé, found their patriotism considerably increased by
the numerous toasts they had drunk to their future victories. The poor
woman uttered a cry, and made a futile attempt to escape by the Rue du
Coq.
"Ah, ah, Citizen!" cried the chief of the Volunteers (for already, with
the need of command natural to man, these worthy patriots had elected
their chief), "Ah, where are you going?"
The fugitive made no reply, but continued her rapid movement.
"What sport!" said the chief; "it is a man disguised, an aristocrat who
thinks to save himself."
The sound of two or three guns escaping from hands rather too unsteady
to be depended upon, announced to the poor woman that her haste was a
fatal mistake.
"No, no," cried she, stopping short, and retracing her steps; "no,
Citizen; you are mistaken. I am not a man."
"Then advance at command," said the chief, "and reply to my questions.
Where are you hastening to, charming belle of the night?"
"But, Citizen, I am not going anywhere. I am returning."
"Oh! returning, are you?"
"Yes."
"It is rather a late return for a respectable woman, Citizeness?"
"I am returning from visiting a sick relative."
"Poor little kitten!" said the chief, making a motion with his hand,
before which the horrified woman quickly recoiled, "where is your
passport?"
"My passport! What is that, Citizen? What do you mean?"
"Have you not read the decree of the Commune?"
"No."
"You have heard it proclaimed, then?"
"Alas, no! What, then, said this decree, in the name of God?"
"In the first place, we no longer say 'God'; we only speak of the
'Supreme Being' now."
"Pardon my error. It is an old custom."
"Bad habit--the habit of the aristocracy."
"I will endeavor to correct myself, Citizen; but you said--"
"I said that the decree of the Commune prohibited any one to go out,
after ten at night, without a civic pass. Now, have you this civic
pass?"
"Alas! no."
"You have forgotten it at your relative's?"
"I was ignorant of the necessity of taking it with me on going out."
"Then come with us to the first post; there you can explain all
prettily to the captain; and if he feels perfectly satisfied with your
explanation, he will depute two men to conduct you in safety to your
abode, else you will be detained for further information. File left!
forward! quick march!"
From the cry of terror which escaped the poor prisoner, the chief of
the enrolled Volunteers understood how much the unfortunate woman
dreaded this interview.
"Oh, oh!" said he, "I am quite certain we hold distinguished game.
Forward, forward--to the route, my little _ci-devant_."
And the chief seizing the arm of the captive, placed it within his own,
and dragged her, notwithstanding her cries and tears, toward the post
of the Palais Egalité.
They were already at the top of the barrier of Sergents, when suddenly
a tall young man, closely wrapped in a mantle, turned the corner of
the Rue des Petits-Champs at the very moment when the prisoner was
endeavoring, by renewing her supplications, to regain her liberty. But
without listening the chief dragged her brutally forward. The woman
uttered a cry of grief mingled with terror. The young man saw the
struggle, heard the cry, and bounding from the opposite side of the
street, found himself facing the little troop.
"What is all this? What are you doing to this woman?" demanded he of
the person who appeared to be the chief.
"Before you question me, you had better attend to your own business."
"Who is this woman; and what do you want with her?" repeated the young
man, in a still more imperative tone than at first.
"But who are you, that you interrogate us?"
The young man opened his cloak, when an epaulet was visible, glistening
on his military costume.
"I am an officer," said he, "as you can see."
"Officer! In what?"
"In the Civic Guard."
"Well, what of that?" replied one of the troop. "What do we know here
of the officers of the Civic Guard?"
"What is that he says?" asked another man, in a drawling and ironical
tone peculiar to a man of the people, or rather of the Parisian
populace, when beginning to be angry.
"He says," replied the young man, "that if the epaulet cannot command
respect for the officer, the sword shall command respect for the
epaulet."
At the same time, making a retrograde movement, the unknown defender of
the young woman had disengaged his arm from the folds of his mantle,
and drawn from beneath it, sparkling by the glimmer of a lamp, a
large infantry sabre. Then with a rapid movement which displayed his
familiarity with similar scenes of violence, he seized the chief of the
Volunteers by the collar of his jacket, and placing the point of the
sabre to his throat, "Now," said he, "let us speak like friends."
"But, Citizen," said the chief, endeavoring to free himself.
"I warn you, that at the slightest movement made, either by you or any
of your men, I pass my sabre through your body."
During this time two men belonging to the troop retained their hold of
the woman.
"You have asked who I am," continued the young man, "which you had
no right to do, since you do not command a regular patrol. However,
I will inform you. My name is Maurice Lindey; I commanded a body of
artillery-men on the 10th of August, am now lieutenant in the National
Guards, and secretary to the section of Brothers and Friends. Is that
sufficient?"
"Well, Citizen Lieutenant," replied the chief, still menaced with the
blade, the point of which he felt pressing more and more, "this is
quite another thing. If you are really what you say,--that is, a good
patriot--"
"There, I knew we should soon understand each other," said the officer.
"Now, in your turn, answer me: why did this woman call out, and what
are you doing with her?"
"We are taking her to the guard-house."
"And why are you taking her there?"
"Because she has no civic pass, and the last decree of the Commune
ordered the arrest of any and every individual appearing in the streets
of Paris without one, after ten o'clock at night. Do you forget the
country is in danger, and that the black flag floats over the Hôtel de
Ville?"
"The black flag floats over the Hôtel de Ville, and the country is in
danger, because two hundred thousand slaves march against France,"
replied the officer, "and not because a woman runs through the streets
of Paris after ten o'clock at night. But never mind, citizens. There is
a decree of the Commune, it is true, and you only did your duty; and
if you had answered me at once, our explanation might have been a much
shorter and probably a less stormy one. It is well to be a patriot,
but equally so to be polite; and the first officer whom the citizens
ought to respect is he, it seems to me, whom they themselves appointed.
In the mean time, take the woman with you, if you please. You are at
liberty to depart."
"Oh! Citizen," cried the woman, who had listened to the whole of
this debate with the most intense anxiety,--"Oh! Citizen," she cried,
seizing the arm of Maurice, "do not abandon me to the mercy of these
rude and half-drunken men."
"Well, then," said Maurice, "take my arm, and I will conduct you with
them as far as the Poste."
"To the Poste!" exclaimed the terrified woman, "and why to the Poste,
when I have injured no one?"
"You are taken to the Poste," replied Maurice, "not because you have
done any one wrong, or because you are considered capable of so doing,
but on account of the decree issued by the Commune, forbidding any one
to go out without a pass, and you have none."
"But, Monsieur, I was ignorant of the law."
"Citizen, you will find at the Poste brave and honorable men, who will
fully appreciate your reasons, and from whom you have nothing to fear."
"Monsieur," said the young woman, pressing Maurice's arm, "it is no
longer insult that I fear, it is death; if they conduct me to the
Poste, I am lost."