Crequy. Towards morning both fell asleep. The old man wakened first.
His frame was deadened to suffering, I suppose, for he felt relieved of
his pain; but Clement moaned and cried in feverish slumber. His broken
arm was beginning to inflame his blood. He was, besides, much injured by
some kicks from the crowd as he fell. As the old man looked sadly on the
white, baked lips, and the flushed cheeks, contorted with suffering even
in his sleep, Clement gave a sharp cry which disturbed his miserable
neighbours, all slumbering around in uneasy attitudes. They bade him
with curses be silent; and then turning round, tried again to forget
their own misery in sleep. For you see, the bloodthirsty canaille had
not been sated with guillotining and hanging all the nobility they could
find, but were now informing, right and left, even against each other;
and when Clement and Jacques were in the prison, there were few of gentle
blood in the place, and fewer still of gentle manners. At the sound of
the angry words and threats, Jacques thought it best to awaken his master
from his feverish uncomfortable sleep, lest he should provoke more
enmity; and, tenderly lifting him up, he tried to adjust his own body, so
that it should serve as a rest and a pillow for the younger man. The
motion aroused Clement, and he began to talk in a strange, feverish way,
of Virginie, too,--whose name he would not have breathed in such a place
had he been quite himself. But Jacques had as much delicacy of feeling
as any lady in the land, although, mind you, he knew neither how to read
nor write,--and bent his head low down, so that his master might tell him
in a whisper what messages he was to take to Mademoiselle de Crequy, in
case--Poor Clement, he knew it must come to that! No escape for him now,
in Norman disguise or otherwise! Either by gathering fever or
guillotine, death was sure of his prey. Well! when that happened,
Jacques was to go and find Mademoiselle de Crequy, and tell her that her
cousin loved her at the last as he had loved her at the first; but that
she should never have heard another word of his attachment from his