"I will tell you, citizen doctor," cried Simon, impatiently. "Her pains are everywhere, in every corner of this lonely and cursed building; and if it goes on so long, we shall have to pack and move.
The authorities have done us both a great honor, for they have had confidence enough in us to give the little Capet into our charge; but it is our misfortune to be so honored, and we shall both die of it. For, not to make a long story of it, we both cannot endure the air of the prison, the stillness and solitude, and it is a dreadful thing for us to see nothing else the whole day than the stupid face of this youngster, always looking at me so dreadfully with his great blue eyes, that it really affects one. We are neither of us used to such an idle, useless life, and it will be the death of us, citizen doctor. My wife, Jeanne Marie, whom you see lying there so pale and still, used to be the liveliest and most nimble woman about, and could do as much with her strong arms and brown hands as four other women. And then she was the bravest and most outrageous republican that ever was, when it came to battling for the people. We both helped to storm the Bastile, both went to Versailles that time, and afterward took the wolf's brood from the Tuileries and brought them to the Convention. Afterward Jeanne Marie was always the first on the platform near the guillotine; and when Samson and his assistants mounted the scaffold in the morning, and waited for the cars, the first thing they did was to look over to the tribune to see if Mistress Simon was there with her knitting, for it used to seem to them that the work of hewing off heads went more briskly on if Jeanne Marie was there and kept the account in her stocking. Samson himself told me this, and said to me that Jeanne Marie was the bravest of all the women, and that she never trembled, and that her eyes never turned away, however many heads fell into the basket. And she was there too when the Austrian--"
"Hush!" cried Jeanne Marie, rising up hastily in bed, and motioning to her husband to be silent. "Do not speak of that, lest the youngster hear it, and turn his dreadful eyes upon us. Do not speak of that fearful day, for it was then that my sickness began, and I believe that there was poison in the brandy that we drank that evening. Yes, yes, there was poison in it, and from that comes the fire that burns in my heart, and I shall die of it! Oh! I shall burn to death with it!"
She put her hands before her face and sank back upon the pillows, sobbing. Simon shook his head and heaved a deep sigh. "It is not that," murmured he; "it is not from that, doctor! The thing is, that Jeanne Marie has no work and no exercise, and that she is going to wreck, because we are compelled to live here as kings and aristocrats used to live, without labor and occupation, and without doing any more than to nurse our fancies. We shall all die of this, I tell you!"
"But if you know this, citizen, why do you not give up your situation? Why do you not petition the authorities to dismiss you from this service, and give you something else to do?"
"I have done that twice already," answered Simon, bringing his fist down upon the table near the bed so violently that the bottles of medicine standing there were jerked high into the air. "Twice already have I tried to be transferred to some other duty, and the answer has been sent back, that the country orders me to stand at my post, and that there is no one who could take my place."
"That is very honorable and flattering," remarked the physician.
"Yes, but very burdensome and disagreeable," answered Simon. "We are prisoners while holding these honorable and flattering posts. We can no more leave the Temple than Capet can, for, since his father died, and the crazy legitimists began to call him King Louis XVII., the chief magistrate and the Convention have been very anxious. They are afraid of secret conspiracies, and consider it possible that the little prisoner may be taken away from here by intrigue. We have to watch him day and night, therefore, and are never allowed to leave the Temple, lest we should meet with other people, and lest the legitimists should make the attempt to get into our good graces.
Would you believe, citizen doctor, that they did not even allow me to go to the grand festival which the city of Paris gave in honor of the taking of Toulan! While all the people were shouting, and having a good time, Jeanne Marie and I had to stay here in this good-for-nothing Temple, and see and hear nothing of the fine doings. And this drives the gall into my blood, and it will make us both sick, and it is past endurance!"
"I believe that you are right, citizen," said the physician, thoughtfully. "Yes, the whole trouble of your wife comes from the fact that she is here in the Temple, and if she must be shut up here always she will continue to suffer."
"Yes, to suffer always, to suffer dreadfully," groaned Jeanne Marie.
Then, all at once, she raised herself up and turned with a commanding bearing to her husband. "Simon," she said, "the doctor shall know all that I suffer. He shall examine my breast, and the place where I have the greatest pain; but in your presence I shall say nothing."
"Well, well, I will go," growled Simon. "But I think those are pretty manners!"
"They are the manners of a respectable and honorable woman," said the doctor, gravely--"a woman who does not show the pains and ailments of her body to any one excepting her physician. Go, go, Citizen Simon, and you will esteem your good wife none the less for not letting you hear what she has to say to her old physician."
"No, certainly not," answered Simon, "and that you may both see that I am not curious to hear what you have to say to one another, I will go with the youngster up to the platform and remain a whole hour with him."
"You will beat him again, and I shall hear him," said Jeanne Marie, weeping. "I hear every thing now that goes on in the Temple, and whenever you strike, the youngster, I feel every blow in my brain, and that gives me pain enough to drive me to distraction."