Theresia looked on those rags for a moment in a kind of horrified puzzlement. Her cheeks and lips became the colour of ashes. She put her hand up to her forehead, as if to chase a hideous, ghoulish vision away, and smothered a cry of horror. Puzzlement had given place to a kind of superstitious dread. The room, the rags, the faces of the soldiers began to whirl around her--impish shapes to dance a wild saraband before her eyes. And in the midst of this witch's cauldron the figure of Chauvelin, like a weird hobgoblin, was executing elf-like contortions and brandishing a packet of letters writ upon scarlet paper. She tried to laugh, to speak defiant words; but her throat felt as if it were held in a vice, and losing momentary consciousness she tottered, and only saved herself from measuring her length upon the floor by clinging with both hands to a table immediately behind her. As to what happened after that, she only had a blurred impression. Chauvelin gave a curt word of command, and a couple of soldiers came and stood to right and left of her. Then a piercing cry rang through the narrow rooms, and she saw Bertrand Moncrif for one moment between herself and the soldiers, fighting desperately, shielding her with his body, tearing and raging like a wild animal defending its young. The whole room appeared full of a deafening noise: cries and more cries--words of command--calls of rage and of entreaty. Then suddenly the word "Fire!" and the detonation of a pistol at close range, and the body of Bertrand Moncrif sliding down limp and impotent to the floor. After that, everything became dark around her. Theresia felt as if she were looking down an immeasurable abyss of inky blackness, and that she was falling, falling. . . . A thin, dry laugh brought her back to her senses, her pride to the fore, her vanity up in arms. She drew her statuesque figure up to its full height and once more confronted Chauvelin like an august and outraged divinity. "And at whose word," she demanded, "is this monstrous charge to be brought against me?" "At the word of a free citizen of the State," Chauvelin replied coldly. "Bring him before me." Chauvelin shrugged his shoulders and smiled indulgently, like one who is ready to humour a wayward child. "Citizen Rateau!" he called. From the anteroom there came the sound of much shuffling, spluttering, and wheezing; then the dull clatter of wooden shoes upon the carpeted floor; and presently the ungainly, grime-covered figure of the coalheaver appeared in the doorway. Theresia looked on him for a few seconds in silence, then she gave a ringing laugh and with exquisite bare arm outstretched she pointed to the scrubby apparition. "That man's word against mine!" she called, with well-assumed mockery. "Rateau the caitiff against Theresia Cabarrus, the intimate friend of citizen Robespierre! What a subject for a lampoon!" Then her laughter broke. She turned once more on Chauvelin like an angry goddess.