CHAPTER XXX ATROPOS La Vireville reprieved was much less composed than La Vireville condemned. For about half an hour, it is true, he sat motionless on the steps of the desecrated altar in the little chapel-prison, a prey to the most acute feeling of loneliness he had ever known in his life. The place was so horribly empty now that it was unbearable. But after a while he rose and began to walk up and down. The harvest of relics which he had seen last night was this morning a little more plentiful, but most of this morning's victims had taken their last precious things with them to the place of death. That young man, his erstwhile comrade, with the miniature--who had that now? he wondered,--how had he, in the end, been able to face the levelled muskets? . . . As Fortuné paced to and fro, he naturally came before long to the thought of escape. He had promised to try. . . . But a very cursory survey of the improvised jail, with its windows high up in the wall, quite out of reach, convinced him of its efficiency in that respect. And, Royalist in sentiment though the people of Auray were, had he succeeded in breaking out he would hardly find safety by broad daylight in its streets full of soldiers. These things needed some previous arrangement. It wanted someone ready to receive and hide him, someone to--yes, parbleu, someone to gallop up with a horse, unlock the door, and then . . . For his mind, by no very subtle ways, had leapt back to the captive of Porhoët, reversing the part he had played in that episode of deliverance. Now was the time for Mme. de Guéfontaine to appear and save him in her turn. It was, alas! a most unlikely consummation. Away in Guernsey, no doubt, she was quietly mending her brother Henri's uniform. But she would have made the attempt, had she been here; of that he was sure. La Vireville sat down once more on the altar steps, and leant his head against the chipped and discoloured plaster rail upborne by its short, stout columns. Two instincts were beginning now to torment him, hunger and curiosity, and neither could he satisfy. From whatever angle he looked at the postponement of his fate--for he never judged it to be more than that--he was baffled. _He_ had no friend in the ranks of the foe. The only thing that occurred to him was that, since his appearance before them, his judges had discovered his identity with that sought-for chief, Augustin of Kerdronan, and wished to question him further--a nuisance, if it were so, and a proceeding likely to be of advantage to neither party. He profoundly wished, however, that something would happen. Yet he was half dozing against the rail when, about nine o'clock, he heard a key thrust into the chapel door, and beheld the entrance of a grizzled sergeant of grenadiers, with a couple of soldiers behind him. Others were visible in the sunlight outside. Fortuné got up and stretched himself.