Let
us talk of old days, Louis, as long as we can--not of my husband;
or my marriage--only of the old times, before I was a burden and
a trouble to you."
CHAPTER V.
The day wore on. By ones and twos and threes at a time, the
condemned prisoners came from the tribunal, and collected in the
waiting-room. At two o'clock all was ready for the calling over
of the death-list. It was read and verified by an officer of the
court; and then the jailer took his prisoners back to St. Lazare.
Evening came. The prisoners' meal had been served; the duplicate
of the death-list had been read in public at the grate; the cell
doors were all locked. From the day of their arrest, Rose and her
brother, partly through the influence of a bribe, partly through
Lomaque's intercession, had been confined together in one cell;
and together they now awaited the dread event of the morrow.
To Rose that event was death--death, to the thought of which, at
least, she was now resigned. To Trudaine the fast-nearing future
was darkening hour by hour, with the uncertainty which is worse
than death; with the faint, fearful, unpartaken suspense, which
keeps the mind ever on the rack, and wears away the heart slowly.
Through the long unsolaced agony of that dreadful night, but one
relief came to him. The tension of every nerve, the crushing
weight of the one fatal oppression that clung to every thought,
relaxed a little when Rose's bodily powers began to sink under
her mental exhaustion--when her sad, dying talk of the happy
times that were passed ceased softly, and she laid her head on
his shoulder, and let the angel of slumber take her yet for a
little while, even though she lay already under the shadow of the
angel of death.
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