In the old days life was filled with human beings coming
and going for whom I did not care; it was sad and dull, but not
horrible; but now, now, what is life without him? He will live on, and
I not near him! I shall not see him, speak to him, feel him, hold him,
press him,--ha! I would rather strangle him myself in his sleep!"
Francine, horrified, looked at her in silence.
"Kill the man you love?" she said, in a soft voice.
"Yes, yes, if he ceases to love me."
But after those ruthless words she hid her face in her hands, and sat
down silently.
The next day a man presented himself without being announced. His face
was stern. It was Hulot, followed by Corentin. Mademoiselle de
Verneuil looked at the commandant and trembled.
"You have come," she said, "to ask me to account for your friends.
They are dead."
"I know it," he replied, "and not in the service of the Republic."
"For me, and by me," she said. "You preach the nation to me. Can the
nation bring to life those who die for her? Can she even avenge them?
But I--I will avenge them!" she cried. The awful images of the
catastrophe filled her imagination suddenly, and the graceful creature
who held modesty to be the first of women's wiles forgot herself in a
moment of madness, and marched towards the amazed commandant
brusquely.
"In exchange for a few murdered soldiers," she said, "I will bring to
the block a head that is worth a million heads of other men.
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