in his heart, but among them was the firmly implanted one that Pétronelle was too insignificant to draw upon herself the terrible attention of the Committee of Public Safety.
By nightfall he had seen the good woman safely installed. Then only did he feel free.
At last he could devote himself to what seemed to him the one, the only, aim of his life—to find Juliette.
A dozen prisons in this vast Paris!
Over five thousand prisoners on that night, awaiting trial, condemnation and death.
Déroulède at first, strong in his own power, his personality, had thought that the task would be comparatively easy.
At the Palais de Justice they would tell him nothing: the list of new arrests had not yet been handed in by the commandant of Paris, Citizen Santerre, who classified and docketed the miserable herd of aspirants for the next day's guillotine.
The lists, moreover, would not be completed until the next day, when the trials of the new prisoners would already be imminent.
The work of the Committee of Public Safety was done without much delay.
Then began Déroulède's weary quest through those twelve prisons of Paris.
From the Temple to the Conciergerie, from
