The Release

Extract

A Girl sat alone in Room No. 10 of the Hotel du Corbeau. From the window she could hear a rush of movement and voices, a perpetual, driving rhythm; it was the Rhine. Nothing could be seen except high fortifications and one or two sentries on guard. But the girl waited by the window, listening.

She was used to listening. For more than three years, she had seen none of the events around her, only heard sounds and guessed at their meaning. Now, as she listened to the river, it became the beating of drums and the ringing of the tocsin and the shouting of words which she tried in vain to catch. The old, sickening agony swept over her. Would no one tell her the news? Why wouldn’t they let her go to her mother? And where was her aunt Elisabeth? Then she seemed to be with her mother, aunt, and brother again. It was a shivering January morning, and they could hear from below the barred window, as she now heard from the river, the cry of ‘Execution of Capetel’ But the noise of the river swelled out, growing mad, exultant, and hateful, till it became the noise of the mob one day in September. ‘Mon Dieu, Madame, it is the head of the Princesse de Lamballe that they are carrying!’ Through the confusion, she could still hear those words and see her mother’s face turn into a senseless mask.