She became known as "Our Little Lady of Sorrows" - Notre Petite Dames des Douleurs.

She could be seen daily wending her way from the Quai de la Ferraille to the Palais de Justice in the early morning, waiting in the queue until the gates were opened, and thereafter taking her place in the vast hall, always in the front row of the balcony that faced the prisoners at the bar. At first the other habitués of the grim spectacle looked on her as one of themselves, fond, as they were, of watching the prisoners file in, seeing them take their place on the benches facing the judges, with the chief prisoner in the iron armchair in the immediate centre. Women in ragged shawls and tattered kirtles, with dishevelled hair under soiled lace caps, or scarlet berets, who had brought their knitting with them to while away the waiting hours, would nudge Aurore when a well known name was called out or if they recognized a noted prisoner.

"That's Amisal over there, citizness, the third from the end. He tried to assassinate the patriot Collot in the Rue Favart, you remember? Lucky he missed fire, the brigand! Oh! and if it isn't that young scrub Cécile Renaud! She was for murdering the Incorruptible himself. They found two knives in her market basket, you know. Well, her way to the guillotine is clear enough.

But soon they found that she was not interested in their talk. She didn't listen: she only looked. She had great eyes of a colour impossible to define, and wore a dark travelling cape with a hood over her fair hair. She would look and look while the batch of prisoners filed in, but as soon as they were seated and the Prosecutor Tinville began his indictment, she would lean back in her seat and take no more notice of what went on in the hall below.

Until another batch was called, when she would sit up and again look on each face as the prisoners filed in. She never spoke and she never cried, but she looked so sad that a woman one day, seeing her come in rather later than usual, made a place for her by squeezing her fellow spectators and said at the same time, "Here comes the Little Lady of Sorrows. Come and sit by me, my dear. You'll get a splendid view, better than the one you had yesterday."

And so the name stuck to her. And she came, day after day, to the Palais de Justice to watch the prisoners file into the hall, there to receive their sentence of death. There was no alternative. The very fact of being suspected of treason, of being denounced by an enemy or a fool, of being brought to the bar of this travesty of justice, was tantamount to a sentence of death. And Aurore came, day after day, to watch this grim spectacle, because she could not find out to what prison they had take André and could find no other way of knowing what became of him. The prisons were crowded, the jailers overworked and harassed. Vainly had she tried to get sight of the list of prisoners in every House of Detention in and around Paris.

"We've no orders," was the response she invariably got from the concièrge or the captain in command. "Get an order from the Committee, and you can see the list."

"What Committee?" she would ask insistently. "And how can I get such an order?"

"Bah! Leave me in peace!" the man - whoever it was - would reply with a savage oath. "You don't think you are the only female who comes bothering us in this way, do you? If I had to attend to all of you-"

He would then turn his back on Aurore and have her ejected from the room and the door slammed in her face. The rules governing prison discipline had became very severe of late. The visits from outside, which used to be allowed and were a great feature of prison life in the past, were now strictly forbidden. The government had persuaded itself that plots of all sorts were being hatched in the Houses of Detention, and prisoners, in consequence, were not allowed to see anyone. Thus frustrated at every turn, Aurore took to haunting the Palais de Justice. There, at last, she would be bound to see Andrè when he was brought to trial. She would see him when that awful tumbril took him to his death.

She had no hope. None. Though she held but little communication with anyone except, of course, Marie, she could not help knowing that the fate of every prisoner these days was a foregone conclusion. It was only a question of time. Some languished weeks in prison, others even months, some few were hurried through the ghastly process of arrest, trail, condemnation, and death in a few days. Aurore knew that and watched in the Palais de Justice every day.

She had written him a letter, just a few words in which she had poured out her every soul. They were words which, she knew, would give happiness to his heart and bring a smile to his dear lips. This precious paper she inserted in a heavy gold locket which she always held tightly in her hand ready to fling it to him if such a blessed opportunity arose.

May had long since yielded to June. June passed on, serene and warm, with its wealth of blossom in the gardens and a bird song in the summer air. All nature seemed to smile while men hated and destroyed one another and dared to mock God with their horrible Mumbo-Jumbo, the feast of the Supreme Bring, with the arch-murderer, Robespierre, parading in azure-blue coat and white breeches as the arch-priest of the new deity.

That was on the 8th of June, less than a fortnight after Andrè's arrest. Doctor Mignet, who had been with Aurore during the first few days of her misery and had attempted the impossible in trying to find out wither they had taken André, had been obliged to return to his duties in Nevers. She hardly noticed his absence. Her heart was dead to all save to an infinity of grief.

It was in the early days of June that she saw her father again. She was walking across the Pont des Arts when suddenly she found herself face to face with Hector Talon. She thought nothing of the meeting at the moment; indeed, she hoped that he had not recognized her. But what he did was to halt for a minute or two as soon as she had passed by and then to follow her.

The next afternoon, when she came home from her daily pilgrimage, she found Marie bursting with what she thought was gladsome news.

"An elderly gentleman has come to see you, citizeness," she said mysteriously. "He is waiting in the parlour."

"Oh, Marie!" Aurore exclaimed involuntarily. "You shouldn't have-"

"Not admitted him!" Marie retorted with the easy familiarity of her kind. "But it's your father, citizeness, your dear old father!"

Aurore listened no further. With a heavy heart she went through into the parlour and saw her father sitting there on the end of the sofa close to the window, the sofa beside which André had knelt that late afternoon when first he had told her of his love. It seemed like a supreme insult, this old man sitting just there complacently gazing out of the window. When she entered he put out his arms and exclaimed with joy and tenderness:

"My little Aurore! At last! At last!"

She had not moved from the door. At sight of him her gorge rose in horror. What kind of a miscreated daughter was she that she should hate her own father? Would she, at least, have sufficient will power not to allow the full flood of her loathing to surge out of her overburdened heart? He, on the other hand, did not appear conscious of her enmity. As she did not rush into his arms he let them drop and went on talking in a glib, matter-of-fact way:

"You have no idea, ma chérie," he said, "how anxious I have been. I suppose your letter in answer to mine miscarried. I never received it, you know."

"What letter?" she asked.

"I wrote to tell you the joyful news. You never replied. But it was a good idea to come yourself instead."

"What joyful news?"

"Why, that I have fulfilled my promise, ma chérie, to rid you of the inhuman monster who had blighted your life."

"You mean that you wrote to tell me that you had committed the most loathsome act of treachery that ever called down the vengeance of God on a miscreant's head."

Even now he looked surprised, bewildered at her vehemence, thinking that his beloved daughter, like so many women in these terrible times, had perchance lost her reason.

"Aurore, my child!" he exclaimed soothingly.

"I am not your child!" she retorted coldly, "no longer the child of so vile a worker of iniquity as you. You have brought upon me such immeasurable sorrow as no man has ever brought on woman since the beginning of time. The very sight of you turns my heart to stone, and I can but pray to God that I may never set eyes on you again. And now, I entreat you to go before I quite forget that you are old and that you are my father."

She threw open the door and stood aside, pointing to it. De Marigny tried to speak. He rose and came a step or two towards her.

"Do not come near me," she said hoarsely. "My God! Can't you see that I am at the end of my tether?"

"You are overwrought, Aurore," he rejoined coolly. "Heaven knows what is going on in your poor distracted mind at this moment. You have spoken words that I shall find hard to forgive, but a father's heart is full of indulgence. I cannot, of course, stay now and plead with you, for the devil apparently has possession of your mind. It will take all our good Abbé's piety to exorcize him."

Marie was hovering in the vestibule. She looked scared to death as De Marigny came out of the parlour and took up his hat and stick.

"Has she been long like this?" he asked her, indicating Aurore and then touching his forehead.

Marie was indignant.

"There is nothing wrong with the Citizeness's brain," she said hotly. "It is her heart that is broken because she worshipped her husband, and he is like to perish on that awful guillotine."

De Marigny shrugged. How ignorant, how unobservant were people of that class! He looked back once over his shoulder. Aurore had not moved. The hood had fallen back from her head, and her delicate profile, with the wealth of fair hair above it like a golden aureole, looked like an exquisite cameo against the dark portière. She looked a living statue of high breeding, of blue blood and age-old descent - the perfect aristocrat. De Marigny shrugged again. Worshipped her husband, indeed? What nonsense! What a lie! Her mind was slightly unhinged, he concluded, that was all. Once all these horrible times were over and he had her back at Marigny she would be the first to laugh at this woman's foolish talk. And he went away entirely unperturbed.