Balthazar then was incontestably a brute; and young Thierry had just told him so, for the third time, when the youthful Madame de Charry opened the door of her cell and entered the gallery. The latter was secured at either end by an iron grating, which was always locked; but the cells themselves, twelve in number, with three or four occupants in each, were barred and fastened only at night. The “citizens” inhabiting them were untried aristocrats; and until the law condemned them to death, they were allowed the liberty of an obscure gallery, from which they could not by any means escape to freedom. The proud beauty who, albeit so young, had been some months a widow, was passing on her way to an adjacent cell, but she paused for an instant to kiss young Edmond on the brow, and to address some words of remonstrance to Balthazar touching his treatment of the little King of the Gallery, as Thierry was called. “May our holy mother the guillotine hug him as she did our other king, Capet!” said Balthazar. “The little reptile taunted me, because his father has escaped from Amiens and reached England; and he refused, moreover, to carry the pretty message I gave him from the public accuser, and addressed to you, citoyenne.” The boy’s eyes filled with tears. They sprang, like the twin fountains of Benasji, from a divided source. Joy sent them gushing at the thought of his father’s escape; and sorrow paid its tribute at the peril which was then threatening his good friend, Madame de Charry. That lady loosened her bracelet, readjusted it on her marble arm, and asked, as she did so, what the public accuser could possibly have to say _to her_. “Ah! ah!” roared Balthazar, the brute; “he invites you to honour the tribunal with your presence tonight; and the _faucheuse_ with the broad knife will send you an invitation to another party tomorrow.” “Be it so,” said the young beauty, without apparent emotion. “In the meantime, _vive le Roi_! And now, my little King Edmond, let us leave citizen Balthazar to his reflections, and come with me to the _soirée_ of Madame de Bohun.” “They will cut off your head!” cried Balthazar, with a candour meant for cruelty. “_They!_” said the lady, with great sweetness; “not if they are gallant gentlemen. They will be the very _canaille_ of butchers indeed, if they strike off so pretty a head as mine: _n’est-ce pas, mon roi?_” said she to Edmond. But the boy’s heart was too full to answer, for he loved the charming Stoic of Orléans. His courage, however, was not buried beneath his emotion; for as he entered the cell of the Countess de Bohun, he turned and gave the huge Balthazar a kick on the right shin, which made the tall savage turn pale. The giant vowed vengeance at a better opportunity, and he limped away to his kennel, cursing the authorities for keeping alive a Royalist child at the expense of the Republic, and for the particular annoyance of their own _citoyen officiel_.