It was natural that at these words hope should spring into the breast of Elphinston; that he should be excited with the thought that now his case might be considered. Also, perhaps, it was natural that to De Chevagny they caused not the slightest emotion. "Is--is there any possibility, any chance of knowing who will be called before them?" asked the former. "Can you, Bluet, give any guess?" "_Mon Dieu! non_," replied the other, "not the least. When D'Argenson, who is the presiding Examiner, has supped--and, Heavens! he will punish old De Launey's _vin de Brequiny_, which is a wine to make the goats dance--then he will call for the list of our visitors, and will go over it from the first here to the last; and from that list he will select the names of some, but who they will be D'Argenson and his friend, the devil, alone can tell." "There will be one," said the marquis softly, "whose name at least he will not select--one who is forgotten by all outside these walls. Yet, how well he was known and loved once by many--by many!" "Ah, Monsieur le Marquis," said the good-natured vagabond, trying to cheer him, "what should we within the walls do if he did not forget you? _Mon Dieu!_ I would disband myself, would go forth also if you, the father of our company, our Bastille flower, left us. _Non, non_, marquis, we cannot part with you. You are our father, our pride." "I was here," said the poor old prisoner, shaking his head--and as he did so he shook a drop from each of his eyes on to his long beard--"when Bernaville was Governor. He put me first in the Tour de la Comte, where Lauzun had been, and where, when he tried to escape, they hanged his servant outside his door as a warning; him they dared not hang; and then I thought always that the Examiner--it was D'Argenson's father in those far-off days--might send for me. But he never did, he never did. And none have sent for me yet, and never will. You will go," he said, looking at Elphinston, "as the others have gone, and he," looking at the maniac on the bed, "will go to his doom, but I shall remain until I go, too--unto my grave. Ah, my grave, my grave! And then--I may see again the young wife they took me from--'tis almost forty-three years ago--and the little babe I left slumbering on her breast; the little child that we were going to make so brave a feast over and christen Brigide because it was my mother's name, because it had blue eyes like hers." Bertie had turned his face away from the old man to hide his tears, and now he took him by the hand and wrung it softly, while Bluet, who, for a turnkey of the Bastille, seemed also much affected, exclaimed boisterously: