“You are right; my bad news is news of him.”

“He has discovered the secret of our escape from the guillotine?”

“No—­he has not a suspicion of it.  He believes—­as his mother, as every one does—­that you were both executed the day after the Revolutionary Tribunal sentenced you to death.”

“Lomaque, you speak positively of that belief of his—­but you cannot be certain of it.”

“I can, on the most indisputable, the most startling evidence—­on the authority of Danville’s own act.  You have asked me to speak out—­”

“I ask you again—­I insist on it!  Your news, Lomaque—­your news, without another word of preface!”

“You shall have it without another word of preface.  Danville is on the point of being married.”

As the answer was given they both stopped by the bank of the stream, and again looked each other in the face.  There was a minute of dead silence between them.  During that minute, the water bubbling by happily over its bed of pebbles seemed strangely loud, the singing of birds in a little wood by the stream-side strangely near and shrill, in both their ears.  The light breeze, for all its midday warmth, touched their cheeks coldly; and the spring sunlight pouring on their faces felt as if it were glimmering on them through winter clouds.

“Let us walk on,” said Trudaine, in a low voice.  “I was prepared for bad news, yet not for that.  Are you certain of what you have just told me?”

“As certain as that the stream here is flowing by our side.  Hear how I made the discovery, and you will doubt no longer.  Before last week I knew nothing of Danville, except that his arrest on suspicion by Robespierre’s order was, as events turned out, the saving of his life.  He was imprisoned, as I told you, on the evening after he had heard your names read from the death-list at the prison grate.  He remained in confinement at the Temple, unnoticed in the political confusion out-of-doors, just as you remained unnoticed at St. Lazare, and he profited precisely in the same manner that you profited by the timely insurrection which overthrew the Reign of Terror.  I knew this, and I knew that he walked out of prison in the character of a persecuted victim of Robespierre’s—­and, for better than three years past, I knew no more.  Now listen.  Last week I happened to be waiting in the shop of my employer, Citizen Clairfait, for some papers to take into the counting-house, when an old man enters with a sealed parcel, which he hands to one of the shopmen, saying: 

" ‘Give that to Citizen Clairfait.’

" ‘Any name?’ says the shopman.

" ‘The name is of no consequence,’ answers the old man; ’but if you please, you can give mine.  Say the parcel came from Citizen Dubois;’ and then he goes out.  His name, in connection with his elderly look, strikes me directly.

" ‘Does that old fellow live at Chalons?’ I ask.

" ‘No,’ says the shopman.  ’He is here in attendance on a customer of ours—­an old ex-aristocrat named Danville.  She is on a visit in our town.’