composition, only hoping she will make a better
use of them for the future, for it must be owned she did not make much
of a job of me."

So he went on his way to the gaoler's room, leaving Brotteaux sorrowful
and the Pere Longuemare trembling and green as a leaf, more dead than
alive to see the impious wretch laugh on the brink of the abyss.

When Germinal brought back the bright days, Brotteaux, who was of an
ardent temperament, tramped down several times every day to the
courtyard giving on the women's quarters, near the fountain where the
female prisoners used to come of a morning to wash their linen. An iron
railing separated the two barracks; but the bars were not so close
together as to hinder hands joining and lips meeting. Under the kindly
shade of night loving couples would press against the obstacle. At such
times Brotteaux would retire discreetly to the staircase and, sitting on
a step, would draw from the pocket of his plum-coloured surtout his
little Lucretius and read, by the light of a lantern, some of the
author's sternly consolatory maxims: "_Sic ubi non erimus_.... When we
shall have ceased to be, nothing will have power to move us, not even
the heavens and earth and sea confounding their shattered
fragments...." But, in the act of enjoying his exalted wisdom, Brotteaux
would find himself envying the Barnabite this craze that veiled the
universe from his eyes.

Month by month terror grew more intense. Every night the tipsy gaolers,
their watch-dogs at their heels, would march from cell to cell,
delivering acts of accusation, howling out names they mutilated, waking
the prisoners and for twenty victims marked on their list terrifying two
hundred. Along these corridors, reeking with bloody memories, passed
every day, without a murmur, twenty, thirty, fifty condemned prisoners,
old men, women, young men and maidens, so widely different in rank and
character and opinion that the question rose involuntarily to the
lips,--had they not been chosen by lot?

And the card playing went on, the Burgundy drinking, the making of
plans, the assignations for after dark at the rails. The company, new
almost to a man, now consisted in great part of "extremists" and
"irreconcilables." But still the room of the eighteen beds remained the
home of elegance and good breeding; barring two prisoners recently
transferred from the Luxembourg to the Conciergerie and added to the
company, by whom they were suspected of being