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Updated: May 17, 2025
The windows were high and barred; and at the outer door, leading into the street, two sentinels kept watch. On entering this comfortless retreat from the court, Lomaque found it perfectly empty. Solitude was just then welcome to him. He remained in the waiting-room, walking slowly from end to end over the filthy pavement, talking eagerly and incessantly to himself.
Carelessly as Lomaque looked at the shocking scene before him, his quick eyes contrived to take note of every prisoner's face, and to descry in a few minutes Trudaine and his sister standing together at the back of the group. "Now then, Apollo!" cried the head jailer, addressing his subordinate by a facetious prison nickname, "don't be all day starting that trumpery batch of yours.
Danville had been astonished at the acceptance of his proffered services; he was still more amazed when he found that the post selected for him was one of the superintendent's places in that very office of Secret Police in which Lomaque was employed as agent. Robespierre and his colleagues had taken the measure of their man he had money enough, and local importance enough to be worth studying.
"Camille Desmoulins has appealed to the people in the Palais Royal; there are fears of a riot." "Only a riot!" repeated Lomaque, sarcastically. "Oh, what a brave Government not to be afraid of anything worse! Any letters?" he added, hastily dropping the subject. "None to the house," said the postman, "only one from it, given me by Monsieur Trudaine.
There was an unsettled look, however, in her eyes, a slowly-heightening color in her cheeks, which showed her to be at least vaguely aware that something unusual had been taking place in the corridor. Lomaque beckoned to Trudaine to leave her, and whispered to him: "The prescription has worked well. You are safe for to-day. Break the news to your sister as gently as you can.
"After all, as this arrest is to be made, it's as well for them that I should make it." Consoling himself as he best could with this reflection, Chief Police Agent Lomaque blew out the candles, and quitted the room.
"Bah!" cried Danville, turning his back on her, "enough of chemistry. Lomaque, now you have begun reading the newspaper, try if you can't find something interesting to read about. What are the last accounts from Paris? Any more symptoms of a general revolt?" Lomaque turned to another part of the paper. "Bad, very bad prospects for the restoration of tranquillity," he said.
Two days after the traveling-carriage described by Lomaque had passed the diligence on the road to Paris, Madame Danville sat in the drawing-room of an apartment in the Rue de Grenelle, handsomely dressed for driving out.
Ever sadder and darker grew the face of Lomaque as he now pondered alone over the changes and misfortunes of the past five years. A neighboring church-clock striking the hour of seven aroused him from his meditations.
Soon the flare of torch-light began to glimmer redder and redder under the dim, starlight sky. "Do you hear that? Do you see the advancing torch-light?" cried Lomaque, pointing exultingly into the street. "Respect to the national hymn, and to the man who holds in the hollow of his hand the destinies of all France! Hat off, Citizen Danville! Robespierre is in the street.
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