owly,
"and had to deal with no hand but this; with no sword except the one
which is to graze you."

"Condemned to death!" murmured La Mole, "why, that is impossible!"

"Impossible!" said the turnkey, naively, "and why?"

"Hush!" said Coconnas, "I think some one is opening the lower door."

"To your cells, gentlemen, to your cells!" cried the jailer, hurriedly.

"When do you think the trial will take place?" asked La Mole.

"To-morrow, or later. But be easy; those who must be informed shall be."

"Then let us embrace each other and bid farewell to these walls."

The two friends rushed into each other's arms and then returned to their
cells, La Mole sighing, Coconnas singing.

Nothing new happened until seven o'clock. Night fell dark and rainy over
the prison of Vincennes, a perfect night for flight. The evening meal
was brought to Coconnas, who ate with his usual appetite, thinking of
the pleasure he would feel in being soaked in the rain, which was
pattering against the walls, and already preparing himself to fall
asleep to the dull, monotonous murmur of the wind, when suddenly it
seemed to him that this wind, to which he occasionally listened with a
feeling of melancholy never before experienced by him until he came to
prison, whistled more strangely than usual under the doors, and that the
stove roared with a louder noise than common. This had happened every
time one of the cells above or opposite him was opened. It was by this
noise that Annibal always knew the jailer was coming from La Mole's
cell.

But this time it was in vain that Coconnas remained with eye and ear
alert.

The moments passed; no one came.

"This is strange," said Coconnas, "La Mole's door has been opened and
not mine. Could La Mole have called? Can he be ill? What does it mean?"

With a prisoner everything is a cause for suspicion and anxiety, as
everything is a cause for joy and hope.

Half an hour passed, then an hour, then an hour and a half.

Coconnas was beginning to grow sleepy from anger when the grating of the
lock made him spring to his feet.

"Oh!" said he, "has the time come for us to leave and are they going to
take us to the chapel without condemning us? By Heaven, what joy it
would be to escape on such a night! It is as dark as an oven! I hope the
horses are not blind."

He was about to ask some jocular question of the turnkey when he saw the
latter put his finger to his lips and roll his eyes significantly.
Behi