He was conducted to the great vaulted rooms of the Temple, to the vast ballrooms of the Palais Conde, where herded the condemned and those still awaiting trial; he was allowed to witness there the grim farcical tragedies, with which the captives beguiled the few hours which separated them from death.
Mock trials were acted there; Tinville was mimicked; then the Place de la Revolution; Samson the headsman, with a couple of inverted chairs to represent the guillotine.
Daughters of dukes and princes, descendants of ancient lineage, acted in these weird and ghastly comedies.

The ladies, with hair bound high over their heads, would kneel before the inverted chairs, and place the snowwhite necks beneath this imaginary guillotine.

Speeches were delivered to a mock populace, whilst a mock Santerre ordered a mock roll of drums to drown the last flow of eloquence of the supposed victim.
Oh! the horror of it all--the pity, pathos, and misery of this ghastly parody, in the very face of the sublimity of death! Deroulede shuddered when first he beheld the scene, shuddered at the very thought of finding Juliette amongst these careless, laughing, thoughtless mimes.
His own, his beautiful Juliette, with her proud face and majestic, queen-like gestures; it was a relief not to see her there.
"Juliette Marny?
_Inconnue,_" was the final word he heard about her.
No one told him that by Deputy Merlin's strictest orders she had been labelled "dangerous," and placed in a remote wing of the Luxembourg Palace, together with a few, who, like herself, were allowed to see no one, communicate with no one.
Then when the _couvre-feu_ had sounded, when all public places were closed, when the night watchman had begun his rounds, Deroulede knew that his quest for that night must remain fruitless.
But he could not rest.

In and out the tortuous streets of Paris he roamed during the better part of that night.

He was now only awaiting the dawn to publicly demand the right to stand beside Juliette.
A hopeless misery was in his heart, a longing for a cessation of life; only one thing kept his brain active, his mind clear: the hope of saving Juliette.
The dawn was breaking in the far east when, wandering along the banks of the river, he suddenly felt a touch on his arm.
"Come to my hovel," said a pleasant, lazy voice close to his ear, whilst a kindly hand seemed to drag him away from the contemplation of the dark, silent river.