“‘Hist!’ said the stranger.  ’You are Jacques, the gardener, arrested for assisting an aristocrat.  I know the gaoler.  You shall escape, if you will.  Only take this message from me to mademoiselle.  You heard.  She will not listen to me:  I did not want her to come here.  I never knew she was here, and she will die to-morrow.  They will put her beautiful round throat under the guillotine.  Tell her, good old man, tell her how sweet life is; and how I can save her; and how I will not ask for more than just to see her from time to time.  She is so young; and death is annihilation, you know.  Why does she hate me so?  I want to save her; I have done her no harm.  Good old man, tell her how terrible death is; and that she will die to-morrow, unless she listens to me.’

“Jacques saw no harm in repeating this message.  Clement listened in silence, watching Virginie with an air of infinite tenderness.

“‘Will you not try him, my cherished one?’ he said.  ’Towards you he may mean well’ (which makes me think that Virginie had never repeated to Clement the conversation which she had overheard that last night at Madame Babette’s); ’you would be in no worse a situation than you were before!’

“’No worse, Clement! and I should have known what you were, and have lost you.  My Clement!’ said she, reproachfully.

“‘Ask him,’ said she, turning to Jacques, suddenly, ’if he can save Monsieur de Crequy as well,—­if he can?—­O Clement, we might escape to England; we are but young.’  And she hid her face on his shoulder.

“Jacques returned to the stranger, and asked him Virginie’s question.  His eyes were fixed on the cousins; he was very pale, and the twitchings or contortions, which must have been involuntary whenever he was agitated, convulsed his whole body.

“He made a long pause.  ’I will save mademoiselle and monsieur, if she will go straight from prison to the mairie, and be my wife.’

“‘Your wife!’ Jacques could not help exclaiming, ’That she will never be—­never!’

“‘Ask her!’ said Morin, hoarsely.

“But almost before Jacques thought he could have fairly uttered the words, Clement caught their meaning.

“‘Begone!’ said he; ‘not one word more.’  Virginie touched the old man as he was moving away.  ’Tell him he does not know how he makes me welcome death.’  And smiling, as if triumphant, she turned again to Clement.

“The stranger did not speak as Jacques gave him the meaning, not the words, of their replies.  He was going away, but stopped.  A minute or two afterwards, he beckoned to Jacques.  The old gardener seems to have thought it undesirable to throw away even the chance of assistance from such a man as this, for he went forward to speak to him.