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Again he saw the jury-bench, the seat where he had been accustomed to loll, the place where he had terrorized unhappy prisoners, where he had affronted the scornful eyes of Jacques Maubel and Maurice Brotteaux, the appealing glances of the citoyenne Rochemaure, who had got him his post as juryman and whom he had recompensed with a sentence of death.
But, directly the citoyen Combalot had taken his leave and the citoyenne Gamelin had gone back to her stove, Évariste repeated the same name in the girl's ear: "Jacques Maubel," he reiterated. She looked up at him in some surprise, and very quietly, still going on cutting a quince in quarters: "Well!... Jacques Maubel...?" "He is the man." "The man! what man?" "You once gave him a red carnation."
She made no further attempt therefore to cure what she called her lover's crotchets, and Gamelin remained firm in the conviction that Jacques Maubel was Élodie's seducer. Through the days that ensued the Tribunal devoted its undivided attention to the task of crushing Federalism, which, like a hydra, had threatened to devour Liberty.
After supper Gamelin ran to the Amour Peintre and burst into the blue chamber where every night Élodie was waiting for him. "You are avenged," he told her. "Jacques Maubel is no more. The cart that took him to his death has just passed beneath your window, escorted by torch-bearers." She understood: "Wretch! it is you have killed him, and he was not my lover.
She would not have started this correspondence under a pseudonym "H. de Maubel!" he said suddenly, "why, Mme. Chantelouve's name is Hyacinthe, a boy's name which suits her very well. She lives in the rue Babneux not vary far from the rue Littré post-office. She is a blonde, she has a maid, she is a fervent Catholic. She's the one."
"Not knowing whether this note will elicit a reply, I abstain from making myself known. This evening a maid will call upon your concierge and ask him if there is a letter for Mme. Maubel." "Hmm!" said Durtal, folding up the letter. "I know her. She must be one of these withered dames who are always trying to cash outlawed kiss-tickets and soul-warrants in the lottery of love.
"Then what bears witness to the perfect futility of this exordium is the way the missive ends: "'If you should take the fancy to write me, you can safely address your letters "Mme. Maubel, rue Littré, general delivery." I shall be passing the rue Littré post-office Monday.
Jacques Maubel was taken back to the Conciergerie; here he wrote a letter while he waited the hour of execution, which was to take place the same evening, by torchlight: My dear sister, The tribunal sends me to the scaffold, affording me the only joy I have been able to appreciate since the death of my adored Nieves.
Gamelin only thought of convicting Maubel of a crime; three times over he pressed the President to ask the accused if he could explain about the carnation the dried petals of which he hoarded so carefully in his pocket-book. Maubel replied that he did not consider himself obliged to answer a question that had no concern with the case at law, as no letter had been found concealed in the flower.
For this reason, having very little hope of dissipating them, she had very little wish to do so either. She ceased to deny having known Maubel, preferring to leave her jealous lover to go astray on a false trail, when from one moment to the next, the smallest incident might start him on the right road.
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