n with her husband were abortive. One
day she received the fearful intelligence that her husband had just been
conducted before the revolutionary tribunal. Josephine waited for
further intelligence in an agony of suspense. Had this tribunal
acquitted her husband, or had it condemned him to death? Was he already
free, or was he free in a higher sense--was he dead? If he were free, he
would have found means to inform her of the fact; and if he were dead,
his name would certainly have been mentioned in the list of the
condemned. In this agony of suspense, Josephine passed the long day.
Night came, but brought no rest for her and her companions in
misery--the other occupants of the prison--who also looked death in the
face, and who watched with her throughout the long night.

The society assembled in this prison was brilliant and select. There
were the Dowager Duchess de Choiseul, the Viscountess de Maille, whose
seventeen-years-old daughter had just been guillotined; there was the
Marquise de Crequi, the intellectual lady who has often been called the
last marquise of the _ancien regime_, and who in her witty memoirs wrote
the French history of the eighteenth century as viewed from an
aristocratic standpoint. There was Abbe Texier, who, when the
revolutionists threatened him with the lantern, because he had refused
to take the oath of allegiance to the new constitution, replied: "Will
you see any better after having hung me to the lantern?" And there was
yet another, a M. Duvivier, a pupil of Cagliostro, who, like his
master, could read the future, and with the assistance of a decanter
full of water and a "dove," that is, an innocent young girl of less than
seven, could solve the mysteries of fate.

To him, to the Grand Cophta, Josephine now addressed herself after this
day of dread uncertainty, and demanded information of the fate of
her husband.

In the stillness of the night the gloomy, desolate hall of the prison
now presented a strange aspect. The jailer, bribed with an assignat of
fifty francs, then worth only forty sous, however, had consented that
his little six-years-old daughter should serve the Grand Cophta as
"dove," and had made all other preparations. A table stood in the middle
of the hall, on which was a decanter filled with clear, fresh water,
around which were three candles in the form of a triangle, and placed as
near the decanter as possible, in order that the dove should be able to
see the better. T