France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799 -- Fiction
Mlle de Rochambeau spent the morning with Marguerite. On her return to
her own cell she found an empty place. Mme de Coigny was gone, and the
little infant wailed on the peasant woman’s lap.
Cléry was better next day. On the third Aline met M. de Maurepas in the
corridor. He was accompanied by a rough-looking turnkey, and she was
about to pass without speaking, but their eyes met, and on the impulse
she stopped and asked:
"How is M. Cléry to-day?"
The young soldier looked at her steadily.
"He has—he has moved on, Mademoiselle," he returned, something of
distress in his tone.
The turnkey burst into a loud, brutal laugh.
"Eh, that was the citizen with the ague? At the last he shook and shook
so much that he shook his head off—yes—right out of the little window,
where his friend is now going to look for it," and he clapped De
Maurepas on the shoulder with a dingy, jocular hand.
Aline drew a sharp breath.
"Oh, no," she said involuntarily, but De Maurepas bent his head in grave
assent.
"Is this so pleasant a camp that you grudge me my marching orders?" he
asked; and as they passed he looked back a moment and said, "Adieu,
Mademoiselle."
She gave him back the word very low, and he smiled again, a smile that
irradiated his rough features and steady brown eyes. "Indeed, I think I
go to ’Him,’" he said, and was gone.
Aline steadied herself against the wall, and closed her eyes for a
moment. She had conceived a sincere liking for the young soldier; Cléry
had done her a service, and now both were gone, and she still left. And
yet she knew that Hébert was loose again. When she had first heard of
his release she spent days of shuddering apprehension, but as the time
went on she began to entertain a trembling hope that she was forgotten,
as happened to more than one prisoner in those days.
Hébert was loose again, but, for a time at least, with hands too full of
public matters, and brain too occupied with the struggle for existence,
to concern himself with matters of private pleasure or revenge.
It was the middle of June before he thought seriously of Mlle de
Rochambeau.
"Dangeau is returning," said Danton one morning, and Hébert’s dormant
spite woke again into full activity.
At the Abbaye, the hot afternoon waned; a drowsy stillness fell upon its
inmates. Mme de Matigny dozed a little. She had grown older in the
past few weeks, but her glance was still piercing, and she woke at
intervals with a start, and let it rest sharply upon her little circle,
as if forbidding them to be aware of Juno nodding.
Marguerite and Aline sat together: Aline half asleep with her head in
her friend’s lap, for Mme de Coigny’s baby had died at dawn, and she had
been up all night tending it, and now fatigue had its way with her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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