His meals were handed to him twice a day. Coarse, ill-cooked fare it was, and very little of that,--some watery soup, a small morsel of meat, a loaf of stale bread and a pitcher of water. He never saw the one who brought it, for the wicket was so arranged as to hide the face outside. The commissaries changed daily, and their visits were always after nightfall. They would come to his wicket and call loudly, "Little Capet, are you there?" "Yes!" he would reply. "Well, go to bed then! You can't have any more light!" they would shout, and extinguish the lantern in the next room. And so the time passed! Louis Charles soon lost all track of the dragging days and weeks, but this solitude began to tell frightfully on his strength, and he grew almost too weak to move about. Upstairs, just above him, his sister and aunt knew nothing of his troubles. They only knew that Simon was gone, for they heard no more dreadful shouting and scolding, nor the plaintive child's voice singing the songs of the Revolution at his jailer's command. But one dark night, Madame Elizabeth received a summons to appear before the terrible tribunal. And she also went out of the Temple, never to return, for she was shortly to travel the same dark way that the King and Queen had gone before her. Little Marie-Thérèse was also left in solitude. And so for a space of several months must we leave the three children, each to a solitary cell, one in the Conciergerie, and two in the Temple Tower. A FRIEND RE-ENTERS AND EVENTS MOVE ON CHAPTER XII A FRIEND RE-ENTERS AND EVENTS MOVE ON On the morning of July first, 1794, Jean sat on the edge of his straw mattress, listening intently for the slightest sound in the corridor without. He had been in the Conciergerie over eight months. How he had come to be left so long without undergoing a trial was a mystery to him, except that it might be explained by the fact of his age. Under fifteen, the Republic considered people as children, and these they did not punish with death. Over it, he would have to suffer as an adult. Now his fifteenth birthday having occurred the day before, he held himself in readiness for trouble! How he had endured those long, dreary weeks, he could scarcely himself have told. Sometimes it seemed as though the solitude, combined with his fears for his loved ones and himself, and the despair at this frustration of all his hopes, would deprive him of his reason. But Jean was a lad of many and varied resources! For one thing he had made friends with his jailers on the very first day, and had lost no opportunity since to improve their acquaintance. With them he held long conversations, and tried thus to learn as much as possible of the state of affairs in the city. But the turnkeys, though friendly, were rather chary of information, and Jean gleaned but little intelligence in this direction. Yesterday, however, one of them had casually dropped a remark that filled him with an unreasoning joy: