“We will then have only fifteen heads to deliver to-day,” said he, after reading the list, “for there must have been a mistake.  One of the names is false, or else the person to whom it belongs has already been delivered.”

“It is probably but a blunder of the pen!” exclaimed a handsome young man who, smiling, stepped out of the crowd of listeners and passed on to the side where the victims stood.  “You read Chapetolle.  There is no such name here.  The hand of the writer was probably tired of writing the numerous lists of those who are sentenced to death, and he has therefore written the letters wrong.  My name is Chapelotte, and I am the one meant by Chapetolle.”

“I do not know,” said the jailer, “but it is certain that sixteen sentenced ones ought to go into the wagons, and that only fifteen have reported themselves in a legal way.”

“Well, then, add me in an illegal manner to your fifteen,” said the young man, smiling.  “Without doubt it is my name they intended to write.  I do not wish to save my life through a blunder in writing, and who knows if another time I may find such good company as to-day in your chariot?  Allow me then to journey on with my friends.”

The jailer had no reason to refuse him this journey, and he had the satisfaction besides of being thus able to deliver sixteen sentenced prisoners to the guillotine.

Such was the society of the aristocrats, among whom Josephine lived the long, dreary days of her imprisonment.  The cell she occupied was shared by two companions of misfortune, the Duchess de Aguillon and the beautiful Madame de Fontenay, who afterward became Madame Tallien, so distinguished and renowned for her beauty and wit.  Therese de Fontenay knew, and every one knew, that she was already sentenced, even if her sentence was not yet written down and countersigned.  It was recorded in the heart of Robespierre.  He had sentenced her, without any concealment.  She had but a few weeks more to endure the martyrdom, the anguish of hope and of expectation.  She was his secure victim; Robespierre needed not hasten the fall of this beautiful head, which was the admiration of all who saw it.  This beauty was the very crime which Robespierre wanted to punish, for with this beauty, Therese de Fontenay, who then resided in Bordeaux with her husband, had captivated the old friend and associate in sentiments of Robespierre, the fanatical Tallien; with this beauty she had converted the man of blood and terror into a soft, compassionate being, inclined to pardon and to mercy toward his fellow-beings.

Tallien had been sent as commissionnaire from the Convention to Bordeaux, and there with inexorable severity he had raged against the unfortunate merchants, from whom he exacted enormous assessments, and whom he sentenced to the guillotine if they refused, or were unable to pay.  But suddenly love changed the bloodthirsty tiger into a sensitive being, and the beautiful Madame de Fontenay, who had become acquainted with Tallien in the prison of Bordeaux, had worked a complete change in his whole being.  For the first time this man, who unmoved had condemned to death King Louis and the Girondists, found on his lips the word “pardon;” for the first time the hand which had signed so many death-warrants wrote the order to let a prisoner go free.