"My God!" she exclaimed. "The tumult augments. My aunt Marguerite has not yet returned. Where can she have gone to? Why did she borrow the cloak of Agnes our servant? Why the disguise? Why did she conceal her head under a cowl? Can she have gone to the town-hall, where my uncle and Jocelyn have been since morning?" At the thought of the champion, Denise blushed, sighed and proceeded: "Oh, should there be any danger, Jocelyn will watch over my uncle Marcel as he would have done over his own father.... But the prolonged absence of my aunt causes me mortal anxiety.... May God guard her...." Agnes the Bigot, the old domestic of the house, entered the room precipitately, and said to Denise whom she had known since her birth: "For the last hour I have noticed three men of sinister looks on our street. They never stray far from our door. I watched them through the lattices. Off and on they consult in a low voice and then separate again. One of them has now planted himself on the left, the second to the right of the door, and the third opposite.... They must have been sent to spy upon the people who enter and leave the house." "Such spyings seem to me ominous; I shall notify my aunt as soon as she returns." "I think this is she," answered the servant. "I heard the shop door open and close; that must be madam." Indeed Marguerite Marcel soon entered the room. She threw far from her a cowled cloak that she had on, and said to Agnes: "Leave us." The provost's wife threw herself into a chair; she was exhausted with fatigue and emotion. Her dejection, the pallor of her visage and the visible palpitation of her bosom redoubled the fears of Denise who was about to interrogate her aunt, when the latter, making an effort over herself suppressed her agitation and said to Denise collectively: "Courage, my child; courage!" "Oh, heaven!... Aunt ... have we any new misfortune to deplore? What has happened now?" "No ... not at present; but to-morrow; perhaps this very evening." Marguerite stopped short for a moment, and then proceeded with still greater calmness and decision: "I paid a tribute to weakness; I now feel strong again; I am now prepared for the worst.... I shall at least know by resignation how to rise to the height of the man whose name I bear! Oh, never was an honorable man more unworthily misunderstood, or attacked in more cowardly fashion!" "Then Master Marcel is exposed to new perils?" "My presentiments did not deceive me. What I have just learned by myself confirms them. A plot is hatching against Marcel and his partisans. Perhaps his own life and the lives of his friends are at stake. Let the worst come! At the hour of danger Marcel will do his duty and I mine.... I shall stand by my husband unto death." Marguerite pronounced these last words in an accent of such mournful determination that a cry of astonishment and fright escaped from Denise.