HADOWS moved behind the broad lattice that formed the upper part of the heavy wooden doors at the gallery's end. Those nearest, observing this and knowing what it portended, caught their breath. From these, apprehension rippled over the groups assembled in that long narrow avenue of doom, striking them into silence.
Upon that silence the rasping of a key in its lock rang like a pistol shot. One of the wings of the great heavy door swung inwards, and the turnkey entered, brawny and swarthy, his blue shirt gaping away from a broad hairy chest, a fur bonnet on his cropped head, a yellow bloodhound at his heels. He stood aside on the platform at the head of the steps, to give passage to a slim young gentleman in a tight black frock and a round black hat adorned by a buckle in front and a cockade at the side. A paper in his hand drew the eyes—some scared, some pathetic, some proudly indifferent and some defiantly scornful—of the hundred men and women assembled there for the daily purpose of hearing that paper's contents. For this slim young gentleman, Robert Wolf, clerk of the Revolutionary Tribunal, was the adjutant of the Public Accuser. His paper bore the list over whose preparation Fouquier-Tinville had labored half the night.
The Citizen Wolf stepped briskly to the edge of the platform, to read the names of those whom Fouquier-Tinville summoned that morning to judgment: “the baker's batch,” as it was called in the cynical jargon of the day!
Having chosen his position, the clerk waited until three men who followed him should have come to a standstill. Not on that account did they hurry themselves. Two of them, men of middle age, both dressed in black, one tall and portly the other short and wizened, took their time deferentially from another who, walking a little in advance, appeared to conduct them.
This was Chauvinière, the Nivernais deputy, tall, slim, not over thirty, of a certain vigorous elegance. He wore a riding-coat with broad lapels and silver buttons, the tails of which reached almost to the heels of his Hessian boots. Spotless buckskins cased his long, lean legs so closely that every muscle was defined, and a cravat of spotless white clothed his neck to the chin. He was girt by a tricolor sash, and a tricolor cockade adorned his grey hat, which was cocked in front, à la Henri IV., and surmounted by a panache of black plumes. Thus were advertised his office and his sansculottism which latter stood too high, had been too fully proven, to be shaken by any gibes at his apparel, whilst his arrogance, audacity and self-assurance were proof against vulgar criticism. Those qualities were to be read in his lean, sallow countenance with its high-bridged nose, its curled upper lip and its keen light eyes under their level black brows. There was a certain raffishness in his air that proclaimed him half-gentleman, half-valet, half-wolf, half-fox.
With a leisureliness that took no account either of the waiting clerk or of the agonized suspense and the pounding of a hundred hearts in that assembly, Chauvinière selected his point of vantage, at a little distance from Robert Wolf, and descended the first step, so that his two companions in black immediately behind him obtained, from the summit of the platform, a clear view over his head.
His keen eyes raked the gallery and the men and women in that throng, most of whom were so scrupulously dressed that, saving for the absence of powder from their heads, they might have been gathered together for a levée. This was a daily miracle performed upon slender enough resources by the prisoners in the Conciergerie.
The deputy's questing glance came at last to rest upon Mademoiselle de Montsorbier, standing slim and straight, beside the chair into which her mother had nervelessly collapsed. Incredibly fearless and resolute she stood, with scarcely loss of color to her lovely face. But the blue-green eyes dilated a little and flickered as they met the deputy's. Her slight bosom moved perceptibly under its crossed muslin fichu, to betray a sudden agitation which not even the advent of the list had been able to arouse.
Chauvinière half-turned to the men in black behind him. He said something in a low voice into an obsequiously lowered ear, and with his silver-mounted cane he deliberately pointed. Three pairs of eyes followed the direction of the pointing, and Mademoiselle de Montsorbier stiffened under that volley of glances whose purport she was far from guessing but which instinctively she felt to bode no good.