Citizen
Danville. Till the confession of the male prisoner exposed the fact,
I can answer for Danville's not being aware of the real nature of the
offenses charged against Trudaine and his sister. When it became known
that they had been secretly helping this lady to escape from France, and
when Danville's own head was consequently in danger, I myself heard
him save it by a false assertion that he had been aware of Trudaine's
conspiracy from the first--"

"Do you mean to say," interrupted the general, "that he proclaimed
himself in open court as having knowingly denounced the man who was on
trial for saving his mother?"

"I do," answered Lomaque. (A murmur of horror and indignation rose from
all the strangers present at that reply.) "The reports of the Tribunal
are existing to prove the truth of what I say," he went on. "As to the
escape of Citizen Trudaine and the wife of Danville from the guillotine,
it was the work of political circumstances, which there are persons
living to speak to if necessary; and of a little stratagem of mine,
which need not be referred to now. And, last, with reference to the
concealment which followed the escape, I beg to inform you that it was
abandoned the moment we knew of what was going on here; and that it was
only persevered in up to this time, as a natural measure of precaution
on the part of Citizen Trudaine. From a similar motive we now abstain
from exposing his sister to the shock and the peril of being present
here. What man with an atom of feeling would risk letting her even look
again on such a husband as that?"

He glanced round him, and pointed to Danville, as he put the question.
Before a word could be spoken by any one else in the room, a low wailing
cry of "My mistress! my dear, dear mistress!" directed all eyes first on
the old man Dubois, then on Madame Danville.

She had been leaning against the wall, before Lomaque began to speak;
but she stood perfectly upright now. She neither spoke nor moved. Not
one of the light gaudy ribbons flaunting on her disordered head-dress
so much as trembled. The old servant Dubois was crouched on his knees
at her side, kissing her cold right hand, chafing it in his, reiterating
his faint, mournful cry, "Oh! my mistress! my dear, dear mistress!" but
she did not appear to know that he was near her. It was only when her
son advanced a step or two toward her that she seemed to awaken suddenly
from that death-trance of mental pain. Then she s