“But thus, it is obvious: by propping the slab-end on the pitcher; by lying down with his neck over the brink of the trough; by upsetting the vessel with a sweep of his arm as he lay. _Mon Dieu!_ see how he sprouts from the chink like a horrible dead polypus! This is no mouse-trap, but a gin to catch human vermin!” “It was not to be foreseen,” muttered the man, a little scared. “Who would have fancied a madman to be in earnest!” “And that remark,” said I, “comes oddly from the lips of a patriot.” He questioned me with his eyes in a surly manner. “Bah!” I cried; “are not Robespierre, Couthon, St Just in earnest? are not you in earnest? and do you not all put your heads into traps? But I beg you to take me out of La Souricière.” He had recovered his composure while I spoke. “Come, then,” he said; “thou art wanted down below. And as to that rascal--_Mordi_!” he chuckled, “he has run into a _cul-de-sac_ on his way to hell; but at any rate he has saved the axe an extra notch to its edge.” On the threshold of the room he stopped me and looked into my face. “How much for a _billet_?” said he. “You have one for me?” “That depends.” “But doubtless you have been paid to deliver it?” “And doubtless thou wilt pay to receive it.” “Oh, _mon Dieu_!” said I; “but these vails! And patriots, I see, are not so far removed from the lackeys they despise.” “_Pardi!_” said the bulky man. “Listen to the fox preaching to the hens! But I will lay odds that in another twelve hours thou wilt be stripped of something besides thy purse. What matter, then! thou wilt have thy crown of glory to carry to the Lombard-house.” I gave him what was left to me. “Now,” said I; and he put a scrap of paper into my hand. I unfolded it in the dim light and read these words, hurriedly scrawled thereon in a hand unknown to me: “_Play, if nothing else avails, the hidden treasures of Pierrettes_.” “Follow me, Thibaut,” said the jailer. * * * * * * * As might feel a martyr, who, with a toy knife in his hand, is driven to face the lions, so felt I on my way to the Tribunal with that fragment of paper thrust into my breast. At one moment I could have cried out on the travesty of kindness that could thus seek to prolong my agony by providing me with an inadequate weapon; at another I was reminded how one might balance oneself in a difficult place with a prop no stronger than one’s own little finger. Yet this thin shaft of light cutting into desperate gloom had disquieted me strangely. Foreseeing, and prepared stoically to meet, the inevitable, I had even--before the _billet_ was placed in my hands--felt a certain curiosity to witness--though as an accused--the methods of procedure of a Court that was as yet only known to me through the infamy of its reputation. Now, however, caught back to earth with a rope of straw, I trembled over the very thought of the ordeal to which I was invited.