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Nor is it in our power to release you from here. But we shall get up a petition signed by all of us for your reprieve, very likely Count de Linieres will not venture to refuse it " Henriette was overjoyed even with this slender resource, and warmly thanked them. At once her busy little brain laid plans for invading the lair of the Frochards.
The wicked Frochards, who have been egging on the crowds to jeer the victims, have become distinctly unpopular. It is Picard's turn to jest the Frochards now. A grenadier offers a little friendly assistance with the bayonet, pricking the old hag in a tender part as if by accident. She jumps and squeals. Sly Picard watches another chance, shoves forward his friend's bayonet to prick her again.
"There!" she says. Henriette presses the newcomer to accompany her. "Sorry, I haven't a minute!" negatives the other, hastening off in spite of Henriette's efforts to detain her. Henriette opens the trap-door of the cellar where the Frochards lodged, and peers within. Courageously she goes down the steps. Sympathy and horror struggle in the thought of Louise being an inmate of this foul place.
But perhaps some one can tell her She is in the Rue de Brissac now, almost at the spot where she herself was kidnapped and Louise was lost. A good-looking daughter of the people comes hurrying by. "Can you tell me where the Frochards live?" inquires Henriette eagerly. The girl points to an almost indistinguishable trap-door, nearly covered with straw, in front of one of the houses.
As Danton's broad back descended down the steps, a vulpine head peered out of the alcove, and Robespierre's cunning, self-satisfied look showed that he recognized Henriette's visitant. In the days following her immurement in the dreadful sub-cellar, Louise became the Frochards' breadwinner. Her pathetic blindness, lovely face and form, and sweet young voice attracted sympathy from each passer-by.
The bundle on the cellar floor of the Frochards den stirred again, this time more actively. The crippled knife-grinder Pierre had entered. His mother was again busied with her potations. Under the half-lifted rags showed the tear-stained face of Louise. The heavy fatigue of street mendicancy had wrapped her in deep sleep, from which she woke with a start to her wretched surroundings.
Louise ate off the de Vaudrey plate, and Pierre perforce sharpened the knives of the September Massacre. Tramps of the boiling, tempestuous City, spectators but not participants of the great events, they looked ceaselessly for her. Nor did the wicked Frochards abide in the den of Louise's imprisonment and sufferings.
Sister Genevieve and the Doctor, who had told her about the Frochards' den, were no longer within her ken. The weary months had dragged along. Notwithstanding the cheering message conveyed by Picard, her knight the Chevalier so far as she knew was still a prisoner of Caen.
It is quite unlikely that she bothers about Picard at all. "Louise! Rue de Brissac!" is the sole thought of her whirling little brain, as she speeds on. Just where is the Frochards' cellar door? Certainly she has never noticed it in her frequent searches of the Pont Neuf district.
In this menage of the begging Frochards, the crippled scissors-grinder Pierre was the only individual worth his salt, and he was heartily despised by his brother Jacques and his mother. The hag's black eyes snapped as she saw Louise whom the hunchback had saved from the water. "Pretty blind she'll beg us lots of money!" she said gleefully to Jacques.
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