But even if they wondered they made no remarks among themselves.
Their faces, blue with the cold, were the perfect mirrors of their own
unconquerable stolidity.

The tower clock of Notre Dame struck seven when the small cavalcade
finally moved slowly out of the monumental gates. In the east the wan
light of a February morning slowly struggled out of the surrounding
gloom. Now the towers of many churches loomed ghostlike against the dull
grey sky, and down below, on the right, the frozen river, like a smooth
sheet of steel, wound its graceful curves round the islands and past the
facade of the Louvres palace, whose walls looked grim and silent, like
the mausoleum of the dead giants of the past.

All around the great city gave signs of awakening; the business of the
day renewed its course every twenty-four hours, despite the tragedies of
death and of dishonour that walked with it hand in hand. From the Place
de La Revolution the intermittent roll of drums came from time to time
with its muffled sound striking the ear of the passer-by. Along the quay
opposite an open-air camp was already astir; men, women, and children
engaged in the great task of clothing and feeding the people of France,
armed against tyranny, were bending to their task, even before the
wintry dawn had spread its pale grey tints over the narrower streets of
the city.

Armand shivered under his cloak. This silent ride beneath the laden sky,
through the veil of half-frozen rain and snow, seemed like a dream to
him. And now, as the outriders of the little cavalcade turned to cross
the Pont au Change, he saw spread out on his left what appeared like the
living panorama of these three weeks that had just gone by. He could
see the house of the Rue St. Germain l'Auxerrois where Percy had lodged
before he carried through the rescue of the little Dauphin. Armand could
even see the window at which the dreamer had stood, weaving noble dreams
that his brilliant daring had turned into realities, until the hand of a
traitor had brought him down to--to what? Armand would not have dared at
this moment to look back at that hideous, vulgar hackney coach wherein
that proud, reckless adventurer, who had defied Fate and mocked Death,
sat, in chains, beside a loathsome creature whose very propinquity was
an outrage.

Now they were passing under the very house on the Quai de La Ferraille,
above the saddler's shop, the house where Marguerite had lodged ten days
ago, whither