o her chest."So he has already escaped to Calvados!"

Making no secret to Edith, she took out the miniature of her lover that was enclosed in the letter, and kissed it repeatedly in floods of tears.

Edith shook inwardly at the sight. Feeling that it was inappropriate to continue peering, she silently withdrew to the shadow in the corner.

"I am lucky," Madame Roland murmured, stroking the letter as if caressing her lover''s body. "Finally, I can kiss you now without fear or shame. Finally, I can give myself completely to my love!"

Once again, she pressed the miniature to her bosom. "Promise me you will live on, my love! For if I were to die, my husband would not survive!"①

"Then, Manon, I should leave now," Edith said in a low voice, reluctant to interrupt the lady''s reverie. "You...take care of yourself."

But as she turned to leave, Edith heard Madame Roland sigh behind her.

"Don''t blame too much that Quenet of yours! In the face of the revolution''s tumultuous waves, each one of us is nothing but negligible pebble! "

The maiden paused for a moment, before walking slowly out of the dim prison.

---------------------

In these days, the fleeing Girondins were inciting federalist rebellions in various places.

Had Madame Roland not spoken those words about gender alliance to Edith, the young girl''s revolutionary fervor, like that of the newsboy outside the ventlight and of most people of this era, would have already turned her admiration for this former idol into contempt, even hatred.

But now, as a woman, Edith sympathised with her in a complex way. She knew Madame Roland''s fate was fraught with only grim possibilities. Regardless of whether Manon was guilty or not, such a punishment would undoubtedly be unjust.

"What a contradictory woman Manon is!" Edith recalled the heart-stopping scene she witnessed in the prison and said to herself, "She has such a keen insigh