"Come," she said to him in a tremulous and affectionate voice, "come, we are waiting for you." The man raised his head, cast a gloomy glance upon the nun, and made no reply. She felt as if a garment of ice had fallen upon her, and she said no more; at sight of him, gratitude and curiosity expired in all their hearts. He may have been less cold, less silent, less awe-inspiring than he appeared to those poor souls, whom the exaltation of their feeling inclined to an outpouring of friendliness. The three unhappy prisoners, understanding that he proposed to remain a stranger to them, resigned themselves to it. The priest fancied that he detected upon the stranger's lips a smile that was instantly repressed when he saw the preparations that had been made to receive him. He heard the mass and prayed; but he disappeared after responding by a few words of negative courtesy to Mademoiselle de Langeais's invitation to share the little supper they had prepared. After the ninth of Thermidor the nuns were able to go about Paris without danger. The old priest's first errand was to a perfumer's shop, at the sign of _La Reine des Fleurs_, kept by Citizen and Citizeness Ragon, formerly perfumers to the Court, who had remained true to the royal family, and of whose services the Vendeans availed themselves to correspond with the princes and the royalist committee in Paris. The abbé, dressed according to the style of the period, was standing on the doorstep of that shop, between St.-Roch and Rue des Frondeurs, when a crowd which filled Rue St.-Honoré prevented him from going out. "What is it?" he asked Madame Ragon. "Oh! it's nothing," she replied; "just the tumbril and the executioner, going to the Place Louis XV. Ah! we saw him very often last year; but to-day, four days after the anniversary of the twenty-first of January, we can look at that horrible procession without distress." "Why so?" said the abbé; "what you say is not Christian." "Why, it's the execution of Robespierre's accomplices; they defended themselves as long as they could, but they're going now themselves where they have sent so many innocent people." The crowd passed like a flood. Abbé de Marolles, yielding to an impulse of curiosity, saw over the sea of heads, standing on the tumbril, the man who, three days before, had listened to his mass. "Who is that," he said, "that man who----" "That is the headsman," replied Monsieur Ragon, giving the executioner his monarchical name. "My dear, my dear," cried Madame Ragon, "monsieur l'abbé is fainting!" And the old woman seized a phial of salts, in order to bring the old priest to himself. "Doubtless," said the old priest, "he gave me the handkerchief with which the king wiped his brow when he went to his martyrdom! Poor man! That steel knife had a heart, when all France had none!" The perfumers thought that the unfortunate priest was delirious. 1830. La Grande Bretèche