It was on the 26th of July that the last blow fell. Aurore sitting at her accustomed place in the Hall of the Palais de Justice saw the prisoners file in, and the first to enter was André.

Our Little Lady of Sorrows! She gave one gasp - a sob that rent her heart and caused even those deadened hearts around her to beat with sudden pity.

"Thou hast seen him, eh, my cabbage?" the woman next to her asked. "Which is he?"

Two or three of them put down their knitting. They were interested. They meant to be kind. Their hearts were dulled by all the miseries and the horrors which they had witnessed - dulled but not dead. Our Little Lady of Sorrows! They were very, very sorry for her! She was so pretty and so young! And she had been watching here day after day for well-nigh two months to catch a last glimpse of her man.

"Don't try and point him out, my pigeon," the woman went on softly; "only nod 'yes' if I guess right."

The woman on the other side said:

"I believe it is that handsome fellow with the one arm. Well, it is a shame that such a fine soldier-"

"Hush, citizeness," someone at the back broke in, "you are talking treason."

That was so. No one was allowed to express pity for the prisoners at the bar, for such pity was a sign of counter-revolutionary tendencies and, as such, punishable by death. Even so, one woman said pointing to André: "He taught the blind to read and the dumb to speak. My daughter, who is blind-"

"Hush! Silence!" came from the rest of the crowd.

Our Little Lady of Sorrows sat and watched, her whole soul in her eyes. She say André as the chief prisoner of the batch sitting in the iron chair immediately facing the judges. His face looked perfectly serene. He looked older, of course, and wan; prison life had no suited his vigorous temperament; but his dark eyes shone brightly, and around his mouth there was that mocking smile which Aurore had so dreaded once, but which since she had learned to love. Unlike his fellow prisoners André had obviously taken great pains with his appearance. He wore his old military tunic, which, though very worn and shabby, had been carefully brushed. He was neatly shaved, and his chestnut hair was tied back with a bow at the nape of his neck.

Our Little Lady of Sorrows watched him and marvelled that God in His mercy did not allow her heart to break. She listened to the indictment read by Prosecutor Tinville. She heard every lying word, every monstrous accusation. She listened and watched, drawing his soul to hers with the magnetism of her eyes. She threw back her hood so that he should see her better. And suddenly he looked up and saw her. Such a look of joy and happiness and love came into his face, as surely only shines on the faces of the blessed. Thereafter he looked neither to right nor left. Only at her. The Prosecutor finished his indictment, the advocate began to plead. Obviously André heard neither. Yet the advocate pleaded with fevour, even with passion. Even the crowd murmured approval at the defence, but what was the good? Prisoners were condemned long before they faced their judges. The advocate was silenced even in the very middle of his peroration, cut short when he was halfway through an eloquent sentence; and the prisoners were not allowed one word in their own defence.

They were all condemned in a body. Traitors all to the Republic! Conspirators against the State! The sentence was that they be guillotined. And that was all! The mock trial was at an end. They were ordered to rise and make way for others. Some of them screamed and wrung their hands; some called loudly to the people and to the Supreme Being to witness their innocence, some took the blow in sullen silence. But André took it with a gently mocking smile. It had to come, and he was prepared. Death theses days was stalking every man: it was bound to be his turn one day, and he was prepared. From the hour when Robespierre and his horde of jackals had attacked Danton the Lion and brought him down, from that hour André, the child of this revolution, knew that he, too, would be its victim. For two months he had languished in prison waiting his turn for the only possible release and dreaming of that wonderful afternoon when first he knew that the woman he worshipped, worshipped him too. So happy, so entrancing had been those hours of supreme joy and love that he felt that Fate and he were quits. God had given him everything, every joy, every happiness, supreme contentment when He gave him this perfect mutual love. So what did anything else matter? Death would only mean a union more perfect - more enduring than anything that Life could give.

All this he tried to convey to Aurore with the last glance which he was able to cast on her. "Do not grieve, my beloved! The happiness which you gave me was too perfect for this earth, too perfect to last."

Aurore watched him until he too disappeared down the stairs that led to the guardroom. Then quickly she rose. There was one more hope of seeing him, when that awful cart took him back to prison. She could follow the cart, she could see him again, she could throw him her last message of love in the gold locket which she always carried - perhaps, even, she could touch his hand. Hastily drawing the hood back over her head, she rose to go. The others made way for her, helped her all they could. They murmured sympathetic words as she stepped over the tribunes to find her way out:

"Our Little Lady of Sorrows! So young! So pretty!"

"And that handsome husband!"

"Ah, me!"

"Where will it all end?"

There was a great crowd outside the gates, greater than usual, Aurore thought, as feverishly she forged her way down the great staircase and into the courtyard. The carts were there, ranged in a file to the left of the gates which were wide open. The crowd was dense round the carts. One had just gone with its batch of condemned: the other was waiting by the postern gate. It was round this one that the crowd was thickest. Aurore, with the determination and courage of despair, pushed and struggled to get near. But it was impossible: she was jostled and elbowed out of the way until she found herself pressed against the iron railing, on the stone base of which some of the throng had scrambled to get a better view. The open gates were close by. From such a point of vantage it would be possible to get a view of the prisoners in the cart over the heads of the crown, and then, when the cart moved away, to slip out by the gate in its wake. Some kindly person helped Aurore to hoist herself up on the stone parapet.

There she stood and waited, all eyes, and with the locket grasped tightly in her hand. She heard the people about her talking.

"Those are the ones from the Blind Institution."

"And those from the School for the Deaf and Dumb."

They were pointing to a small group of men and women, two or three score of them, who were gathered close around the cart.

"One of the prisoners taught in those institutions."

"Citizen Vallon. I knew him. A nephew of mine is blind. Vallon did wonders with him."

"He taught the blind to see."

"And the deaf to hear."

"I suppose they have come to see the last of him."

"Poor creatures! What will become of them now?"

"Hush! Here they come!"

The prisoners were filing out of the building and were being hustled into the cart. There were eight of them, five men, three women. The men's coats were tied by the sleeves round their necks. All had their arms tied with cord behind their backs. André was the last to step into the cart: at sight of him one part of the crowd set up a cry, weird and inarticulate, the cry peculiar to the tongue-tied and the dumb: it was taken up by the blind, who had not seen but could guess. The blind called out piteously: "Do not leave us in darkness, Citizen Vallon!" but the dumb could only utter their hideous, inarticulate shrieks.

André stood up in the cart with his old military tunic tied round his neck; his one arm was tied behind his back to the empty sleeve of his shirt. His glance swept the crowd in search of his beloved, and like a magnet her eyes drew his and held them for an instant. Only a few seconds, though, for the next moment he saw those poor afflicted wretches about him, and for the first time his aching heart drew tears to his eyes.

"Vallon!" they moaned and cried. "Vallon!" like children calling in distress to their mother.

The soldiers jostled them, tried to silence them by threats, but they would not be moved, nor would they be silenced, until suddenly out of the crowd behind them there rose a louder cry:

"You scurvy knave! You abominable hypocrite! At last, at last you get your deserts! Scoundrel! Hellhound! Take that in remembrance of those whom you have outraged!"

Aurore saw it all! It was her father, and Hector Talon was with him. Charles de Marigny seemed to have cast all weakness aside, to have suddenly found the vigour of youth through the power of his hatred. It was amazing how he pushed his way through the crowd, right up to the tumbril, and then, with a sudden spring, he put on foot on the hub of the nearest wheel. He was brandishing a stick with the obvious purpose of hitting at André, when the crowd, taken aback for the moment, seized him and dragged him down.

Aurore put her hand up to her mouth to smother a cry. Her father had fallen backward, dragging Hector Talon down with him in his fall. She could see nothing more than that, for the crowd was all over him, and everything seemed confusion - confusion made hideous by weird cries and imprecations. The people in the rear of the crowd declared: "C'est bien fait!" It served the miscreant right for trying to hit at a brave soldier who had lost one arm in the defence of his country. The soldiers tried to restore order and only succeeded in keeping back the crowd - the poor afflicted - at the point of the bayonet.

Aurore's eyes wandered back to the tumbril in search of André. She clutched the gold locket with her last message of love, ready to fling it to him. But she couldn't see him; be must have been struck by the old maniac and fallen down, perhaps, on the floor of the cart. She fingered the thing in her hand feverishly - and suddenly was aware that the thing she fingered as unfamiliar in shape and in weight. She looked down upon it. The gold locket was not there; she had instead a crumpled, soiled piece of paper in her hand; it was wrapped around something hard and rough, possibly a stone. She couldn't think what it meant. What abandoned thief had dared to filch her locket? And then a swift recollection went though her mind like a flash. When she saw her father spring up on the hub of the cart-wheel she had tried to smother a cry of horror and had felt a firm, kindly hand grasping hers.

She had thought nothing of it at the moment, merely thought that some gentle soul was trying to express mute sympathy. Instead of this mysterious substitution! What could it mean? Was it? Could it be from André? Oh! if she could only see him. But there was the crowd, the poor, miserable, afflicted crowd, trying in a futile way to avenge an insult done to the man they revered. The soldiers, reinforced by comrades, had pushed them well away. Aurore could not see what had become of her father. Had he been trampled underfoot by the infuriated mob? Had punishment overtaken him at the very culmination of his treachery?

Just then there was another commotion. A wild, terrified shriek, and Hector Talon was hoisted aloft by half-a-dozen strong arms and then flung, still yelling, into the cart. Some people laughed. The deaf and dumb who had seen gave a weird cry of content. The sergeant in command cast a final glance on the tumbril.

"Allons!" he called with stolid indifference. "The batch is complete! Eight sheep for Citizen Samson to-morrow."

Then he gave the word of command: "En avant," and the cart-wheels creaked on their axles as the horses began to move.

And André! Aurore could not see André! Not even now when the tumbril turned out of the gates so close to her. The crowd surged in its wake, mostly in silence, though the poor blind who were nearest to the cart continued to call on Vallon, while the tongue-tied, uttering unintelligible sounds, hung on to them and tried hard to explain that Vallon, Vallon, their father and their mother and their friend, was no longer there.

Aurore, more dead than alive, had scrambled down fro the parapet. The crowd was perceptibly thinner. A few soldiers were rounding up the poor afflicted. The others, for the most part, hung about waiting to see the next batch of prisoners file out. Only a few followed the tumbril, from which could still be heard the agonized yells of Hector Talon. In a few more minutes the vast courtyard seemed almost peaceful. Just a few people waiting about in small groups here and there. The spectacle of the day was not yet over. There would be at least another five tumbrils to watch. The blind and the deaf and dumb, the wretched and the poor, had drifted away. Wither? No doubt this fraternal government knew. Was this not the millennium so confidently foretold?

The soldiers had restored order. They had done it at the point of the bayonet, driving the afflicted away like useless sheep unfit even for the knacker. They had also apparently dragged away the inaniment and lifeless bodies of those who had been unfortunately or luckily succumbed in the mêlée. Among these was the body of a man who had once been styled Monseigneur le Duc de Marigny, one of the proudest names in France, who once had power of life and death over his fellow men and could toy with the honour of any poor wench who happened to please his eye. His mangled body lay now in the guardroom of the Palace, so-called of Justice; the naked feet of a score of unwashed rabble had trampled the life out of him. Not even decently covered with a sheet, the illustrious remains of a descendant of kinds was destined for a pauper's grave.

But all this Aurore only found out later. Her thoughts, for the moment, were far enough away from her father who had done her such a great - such an irreparable injury. She had found a deserted corner in an angle of the building, and here, unseen by prying eyes, she unfolded the paper which had so mysteriously been thrust into her hand. And this is what was written thereon:

André is safe! Go home and wait for him. Silence and discretion above all.

And below there was the device of a small five-petalled flower roughly tinted scarlet.

And that was all. Aurore, dazed and puzzled, marvelled if she were dreaming now or if the rest of this day had been a hideous nightmare. If, when she woke anon, she would find herself inside the gates of an earthly paradise or of an unendurable hell? André's safe! Where? When? How? BY whose agency had he been snatched from out the jaws of death? How and why had God interfered to prevent the monstrous holocaust?

André safe? Could it be true? Did such heavenly things happen in these days of darkness, of doubt and misery?

And all the while that these doubts, fears, conjectures, alternated in Aurore's mind, with the wildest, most unbelievable hope, she was running home, running like one urged by hope or driven by despair.

André safe! And Paris looked just the same! The quays, the river, the pavements, the people passing by as if nothing had happened. Was life going on just the same, then? If so, surely it could not be true that André was safe.

Marie wondered what had happened to the Citizeness. Her habitual sadness have given place to a febrile restlessness. She seem unable to sit still. For hours she wandered from room to room, up and down, taking no rest. She tried to eat, but food, apparently, choked her.

Marie asked questions but received no answer. She feared, indeed, that the Citizeness was sick with the fever. She suggestion bed, and toward ten o'clock Aurore agreed to lie down, but only on condition that Marie herself went to bed. She certainly was in a fever then, with cheeks aflame and hands cold as ice. But she did make pretence to go to bed, drank the orange-flower water which Marie had prepared, and promised to go to sleep.

She waited, quiet as a mouse, until no sound save a comfortable snore came from Marie's room. The good soul had taken to snoring of late, and many a time had the sound set Aurore's nerves on edge. But to-night she welcomed it. Half-past ten. She crept noiselessly out of bed and put on her clothes again. She lit a candle and with it tiptoed out to the vestibule. She set the candle on the table, and she drew the bolt of the front door, leaving it ajar. She pulled a chair close to the door, sat down and waited.... Waited, wide-eyed and expectant, as she had waited, day after day, these two months past in the Hall of the Palais de Justice.

A few minutes after midnight she heard a footstep on the stairs. No need to make a guess as to whose it was: she would have known it among hundreds of thousands. She left the door ajar and went back into the parlour. she sat down in the big armchair. The room was all dark save for the dim light cast in by the flickering candle in the vestibule.

And thus he found her, waiting for him and ready, with arms held out so that he could pillow his tired head against her warm bosom. She gathered him in her arms with that loving tenderness which is the essence of a good woman's passionate love. Her first kiss was on his hair; then only did her lips find his.

Of danger and death, of rescue or safety, there was no talk. All that he said was, "Ma mie!" as, cheek, to cheek, they sat there in the big armchair, forgetful of the world, forgetful of everything save of their love.