before the revolutionary tribunal.  Josephine waited for further intelligence in an agony of suspense.  Had this tribunal acquitted her husband, or had it condemned him to death?  Was he already free, or was he free in a higher sense—­was he dead?  If he were free, he would have found means to inform her of the fact; and if he were dead, his name would certainly have been mentioned in the list of the condemned.  In this agony of suspense, Josephine passed the long day.  Night came, but brought no rest for her and her companions in misery—­the other occupants of the prison—­who also looked death in the face, and who watched with her throughout the long night.

The society assembled in this prison was brilliant and select.  There were the Dowager Duchess de Choiseul, the Viscountess de Maille, whose seventeen-years-old daughter had just been guillotined; there was the Marquise de Crequi, the intellectual lady who has often been called the last marquise of the ancien regime, and who in her witty memoirs wrote the French history of the eighteenth century as viewed from an aristocratic standpoint.  There was Abbe Texier, who, when the revolutionists threatened him with the lantern, because he had refused to take the oath of allegiance to the new constitution, replied:  “Will you see any better after having hung me to the lantern?” And there was yet another, a M. Duvivier, a pupil of Cagliostro, who, like his master, could read the future, and with the assistance of a decanter full of water and a “dove,” that is, an innocent young girl of less than seven, could solve the mysteries of fate.

To him, to the Grand Cophta, Josephine now addressed herself after this day of dread uncertainty, and demanded information of the fate of her husband.

In the stillness of the night the gloomy, desolate hall of the prison now presented a strange aspect.  The jailer, bribed with an assignat of fifty francs, then worth only forty sous, however, had consented that his little six-years-old daughter should serve the Grand Cophta as “dove,” and had made all other preparations.  A table stood in the middle of the hall, on which was a decanter filled with clear, fresh water, around which were three candles in the form of a triangle, and placed as near the decanter as possible, in order that the dove should be able to see the better.  The little girl, just aroused from sleep and brought from her bed in her night-gown, sat on a chair close to the table, and behind her stood the earnest, sombre figure of the Grand Cophta.  Around the table stood the prisoners, these duchesses and marquises, these ladies of the court of Versailles who had preserved their aristocratic manners in the prison, and were even here so strictly observant of etiquette, that those of them who had enjoyed the honor of the tabouret in the Tuileries, were here accorded the same precedence, and all possible consideration shown them.

On the other side of the table, in breathless suspense, her large, dark eyes fastened on the child with a touching expression, stood the unhappy Josephine, and, at some distance behind the ladies, the jailer with his wife.