"But you know we thought of that before, Harry, and agreed it would be a terrible risk to try it, for the very first man you spoke to might turn round on you."

"Of course there is a certain risk, Jeanne, anyway. There is no getting a prisoner out of La Force without running some sort of risk; the thing is to fix on as safe a plan as we can. However, we must think it out well before we do try. A failure would be fatal, and I do not think there is any pressing danger just at present. It is hardly likely there will be any repetition of the wholesale work of the 2nd of September; and if they have anything like a trial of the prisoners, there are such numbers of them, so many arrested every day, that it may be a long time before they come to your sister. I do not mean that we should trust to that, only that there is time for us to make our plans properly. Have you thought of anything?"

"I have thought of all sort of things since you left us this morning, Harry, but they are like yours, just vague sort of schemes that do not seem possible when you try to work them out. I do not know whether they let you inside the prisons to sell everything to the prisoners, because if they did I might go in with something and see Marie, and find out how she could be got out."