displeasure, he poured into her ear, in one breath daring, in another
shy, a thousand and one of those vague, delightful half-confidences
which in the imagination of the lover awaken as naturally as the
flowers open to the sun.
Nicole could not but listen. She assembled a bouquet and pressed her
face against it to screen her pleasure from his avid scrutiny. From
time to time she turned, and looking him full in the face, sought to
read there the true value of his words. But almost immediately she
would turn with a wistful smile of unbelief. At length she checked him,
saying, with reluctant gentleness:
"Enough, Barabant. Your imagination runs away with you. You do not know
your own feelings."
Barabant, borne on by the ardor of his emotions, retorted point-blank:
"And you, do you know yours?"
At this sudden challenge, Nicole had a moment of confusion, during
which she answered at random:
"I?" But immediately regaining her composure, she added, "Perfectly."
"You evade my question."
"If you begin like that, I warn you I will not listen. Besides, I am
neglecting my cockades."
She unslung her basket and again accosted the crowd. Barabant, after
the first outburst of expostulation, waited moodily, leaning against
a tree, his gaze lost in the current. The moment Nicole was assured
of his abstraction, she hesitated no longer, but slipping through the
throng, quickly gained her liberty among distant streets.
* * * * *
She knew that the evasion was unwise, exposing her to his
judgment either as a coquette or as fearing to betray her true
feelings--opinions which she did not wish him to entertain. She had
fled, but not by calculation. She had again avoided him, and yet she
scarcely understood why. New emotions had awakened in her a commotion
that disturbed her whole theory of life.
Before, with happy tolerance, she had passed along the weary road of
poverty, shrugging her shoulders at hunger, meeting adversity with a
smile, expecting two or three attachments, not deep; delightful while
lasting, sharp and saddening when broken; but, sad or sweet, not to be
regarded too seriously,--the lot of life.
She had, therefore, welcomed the coming of Barabant with the
pleasurable anticipation of a delightful comradeship. That she could
retain him, or, in all probability, would care to retain him, beyond a
certain term never occurred to her. As to the question of marriage, it
did not for a moment enter her head. For her it did not exist.
A sigh drawn from her soul as she stood by his bed had dissipated
all that, and discovered to her immense longings, womanly, motherly
necessities which she had never realized before and which she
imperfectly comprehended now. She perceived him no longer as a comrade,
but as the new need of her awakened nature.
She had imagined love as impassioned, headlong, and impetuous, and,
in the place of this ideal, she felt only the confident, weak appeal
of Barabant to her ministering tenderness. The sensation was acute,
poignant, disturbing; the happiness that had possessed her then was too
big, too strange; it frightened her. She feared such a transforming,
all-consuming love. To give herself utterly thus she felt, in her
intuitions, would mean only disaster. So she fled from herself, trying
to stifle that immense emotion to which she had no right,--so fraught
with peril. So when, through all the rumble of sound and the ceaseless
rabble of the boulevards, there returned the silent room under the
eaves, and the feverish smile that answered to her soothing touch, she
incessantly cried to herself:
"No, no. I would love him too much. The end would crush me."
Little vagrant of the people, she knew well what that end inevitably
must be.
VIII
THE MOTHER OF LOUISON
Barabant, baffled and incensed at Nicole's desertion, vowed that he
would be through with such a coquette. Where pride begins there is a
limit to gratitude, and that limit she had overstepped. He washed his
hands of her. So, having decided--irrevocably decided--that Nicole had
removed herself from any interest of his, and that it was a matter of
indifference to him whether or not he saw her again, he determined to
bring her to reason by paying attention to Louison.
Accordingly he contrived to meet her in the passageway the morning
after his unceremonious desertion by Nicole.
"Salutations, Citoyen Barabant," Louison cried. "No luck this morning.
Nicole has already left."
"Nicole is out of the question," he retorted.
"What!" Louison opened her eyes in astonishment.
"I say, we have nothing to do with Nicole," he replied coolly. "Where
are you bound?"
"To the flower-market."
"I understand the route is dangerous at this time of day."
"Exceedingly dangerous."
"Then I had better accompany you."
"I think you had."
With this light introduction, they set out through the stirring city,
greeted by the slamming of opening shutters, and escaping the clouds of
dust that rose from the brooms of concierges. Louison was the first to
speak.
"Well, comrade, and how goes it with you?"
Barabant affected ignorance.
"What, is it not serious with you and Nicole?"
"Serious is a big word," he answered, resolved not to yield an inch.
"I see, a little interest, but not--not the grand passion, violent and
sacred!" She added, with a false sigh, "Poor Nicole, it is serious with
her."
"Of course."
"I know it."
"You imagine it."
"I know it by one sign: she is jealous. There you are!" She laughed.
"She is always jealous of me when it's serious. This time, though,
there is no cause. I shall not interfere." She placed a flower to her
lips and shot a quick glance up at him. "Though I met you the first."
"Do I count for nothing--or my preference?"
"Nini!" She shook one finger slowly back and forth. "Let us talk of
other things. I might unconsciously break my promise."
The air grew fragrant as they entered a square blotted out with tents.
Masses of red and pink, of white and yellow, met the eye through sudden
lanes in the petticoat crowd.
"Leave me now to my bargaining," she said. Stopping in the perfumed
alley at a tent, where the swinging sign-board bore the name la Mère
Boboche, she cried tartly: "Good morning, citoyenne. The flowers are
very stale this morning."
A thin, bent woman turned her one good eye, and recognizing a daily
opponent, rose, drawing in her lips and nodding.
"Eh, they are dear this morning, but you have brought your muscadin.
You can pay well to-day after the way you cheated me yesterday."
"He is my brother," Louison said coldly, turning over the flowers.
"Oui dà!" La Mère Boboche dropped an anxious glance at her counter.
"Isn't he handsome, though, her muscadin? What arms, what a chest, eh?
Solid that!"
Louison, observing that Barabant was uneasy under this chaffing, was
about to interpose when a shrill voice rose in taunt from the opposite
stall.
"What a monster of immorality! Allons, la mère, it's time you forgot
such things."
Instantly the two enemies let loose at each other floods of
vituperation.
"Listen to the evil tongue!"
"Hark to the old hen, what a cackle!"
"Corrupter of youth!"
"Cheat!"
"Impostor!"
Louison, profiting by the outcry, selected her flowers and escaped the
fray.
"Now for some white ones and I am done. Aïe, what a jam!"
She took his arm, and as they entered the press of the main alley, once
or twice was swept up against him with great force.
"Pardon; aïe, aïe, pardon! What a scramble this morning!" She was swung
face to face with her protector, her eyes matching his in height. They
freed themselves and reached another shop.
"Thanks, citoyen; your arm is strong."
Louison, giving a look of admiration at his limbs, began her
bargaining. Barabant, though aware of the artifices, resisted weakly
the direct attack. With a new interest he studied the liberty-cap
that flamed in the black, sinewy wave of her hair. She was dressed in
a yellow bodice, falling to a short skirt of light-blue fustian. The
ankles thus revealed were shapely, and attracted the eye with their
bright bit of red stocking. He began to ask himself if she were not
really beautiful, as he watched the figure, unusually erect, every
motion of which was made with grace and ease.
Louison, observing Barabant's study, from time to time turned her head
to send him a smile over her shoulder. Occasionally she frowned and, as
though to discourage his examination, shook her head.
Barabant forgot the curious impression she first had made upon him.
He saw only a face with great capabilities of expression: mobile,
flexible, obeying the capricious thought. The eyes more than ever
arrested his attention and baffled it. They opened to him a way; but
when he looked it was as though penetrating into a vast darkness.
"Why do you look at me so?"
Barabant recovered to find Louison at his elbow, her purchase made,
regarding him with amusement.
"You mystify me," he said frankly. "There is something about you I
cannot place. What is it?"
She shook her head.
"Don't. Besides--Nicole."
"You have been very solicitous to leave me to Nicole," he said, with a
smile. "You choose excellent means to gain your end."
He had expected to catch her confused and blushing. Instead, she
discovered a row of white teeth, and nodding her head, said:
"Eh, you are not so slow after all." Before he could reply, she
exclaimed, "Hello, there's mama!"
She indicated a wig-maker's, where, on the door-step, a woman of about
thirty-five or-six was sitting, carding a wig. Despite the difference
of ages, Barabant noticed a similarity in the color of the hair and in
the span of the eyebrows.
"Good morning, mother!"
The woman raised her head, but as her glance reached them started back,
as though from a feeling of repulsion, and immediately dropped her head.
"Thank you, I am well," Louison cried mockingly. "Good day, mother, we
can't stop." She turned in perfect good humor to Barabant. "There's a
model mother for you; no trouble at all!"
"And your father?" Barabant inquired, as much struck at her philosophic
attitude as at the maternal indifference.
"There's the trouble, voilà." She held her thumb-nail against her teeth
and clicked it. "She has never been willing to tell me his name." She
shrugged her shoulders. "That's stupid, isn't it? Why not?"
Barabant asked her curiously how long they had been parted.
"Since I was five years old. I only remember some dreadful scene at
home,--I don't know what,--and all at once her manner changed to me.
The next day she drove me out."
"At five?"
"Nothing extraordinary in that," Louison answered, surprised at his
astonishment. "Ah, you do not know our Paris. She married soon after;
perhaps it was for that, but I think not." She was silent a moment. "I
think she discovered something about my father: that he was an abbé or
an aristocrat."
"And you?"
"I begged. I found a corner in the cellar at la Mère Corniche's. You
have never been in that pleasant abode?" She made a wry face. "There
are rats; you don't get much sleep. Then it smells bad and it is black;
though of course at night that makes no difference. I did not stay
there long."
"What did you do?"
"Oh, I passed from corner to corner." She stopped in the square and
seated herself on a bench. She emptied her flowers and held them out to
Barabant. "Hold these while I make my cockades. I passed from family to
family. I was well treated. They gave me a crust or a bone, and let me
crawl into a corner at night. Of course I worked. It was interesting!"
She wove the flowers deftly into cockades, taking them from his lap,
their hands brushing each other from time to time. "Does that amuse
you? Good. Then I'll continue. At ten I began to sell flowers, and then
they treated me better--I shared meals."
"What a life! It must have been rough at times?" Barabant asked the
question not without a mixture of curiosity in his pity.
"Yes, at first." She returned thoughtfully over her history. "But I
stabbed a fellow who was annoying me. He lived, but the result was just
as good. They are all afraid of my temper, and there is no protection
like that." She rose, having finished the cockades, and faced him with
a smile in which struggled a temptation. "You know I have a temper; oh,
but a temper--a temper to make your hair stand on end!"
"I can believe it," Barabant said, studying her.
"Would you like to see?" she asked mischievously.
Without waiting a reply, she halted, caught her breath a little, and
drew back. The mouth dropped open, the eyes fixed themselves. Then by
the sheer power of her will she banished the blood from her face. The
lips closed in a thin, cruel line, the nostrils dilated, while in the
eyes glowed such malignant, tigerish hatred that Barabant, with an
oath, sprang backward, placing the bench between them.
Immediately a low laugh rang out. The features changed from the
hideousness of wrath to a look of amusement, and Louison, again erect,
sidled up to him with a smile lurking in the corners of her lips.
"Did I frighten you? I like to do that." Her face had regained its
composure, but it was a cold constraint; she was still pale from the
force of the emotion. "It is so amusing to frighten people. You see, I
am able to protect myself."
"That I can believe," Barabant cried, finding his voice. "It is
unpleasant!"
"Don't be frightened; I reserve that for my enemies. I know how to
please, also."
She laughed, amused at his horror.
"And now I must get to selling my cockades. You can return with me only
as far as the Seine. A companion such as you, you understand, would
never do; it would not be professional."
Arranging her cockades in the basket, which she transferred to her arm,
she retraced her steps.
"Ah, there's mama again," she exclaimed, as they neared the
wig-maker's. "Let's see if she'll greet us more cordially."
Suddenly she stopped and, with a gleam of mischief, caught his arm.
"I have an idea. Follow me. I'll make her speak."
They approached the woman on the step, who, after the first quick
glance, abased her head without further recognition.
"Good morning, mother."
The woman continued silently to card the wig.
"Eh, Mother Baudrier! It is I, your daughter--Louison. You won't
answer? Good-by, then." Louison turned as though to leave, calling
back: "By the way, I've discovered my father."
The woman, with a cry, staggered to her feet, and, choking for
utterance, fell back against the house; while in her eyes was the wild
light of abject terror. Then perceiving by Louison's mocking laugh that
it was a trick, without a word she gained the doorway and tottered into
the house.
Louison, amazed and perplexed, remained fastened to the ground.
"Bon Dieu," she said at last, thoughtfully, "extraordinary! Who could
he have been?"
Barabant echoed the question, while the memory of the scene sank into
his mind, and with it a silent resolve to investigate the mystery
further.
IX
THE TURN OF JAVOGUES
Barabant spent the remainder of the morning in rambling through the
markets, skirting the shores of the river, seeking everywhere the
thoughts of the people, listening to their ambitions, their desires,
and their hopes. Toward noon he drifted among a throng of masons who,
dispersing languidly over blocks of stone, were crowding into the
nearest café.
"Salutations, citoyens!" he cried to them, according to the custom of
free greetings that obtained. At the sight of the sling he still wore
they hailed him warmly, asking:
"You got that at the Tuileries, citoyen?"
"Why, I know him," one suddenly exclaimed; and pushing to the front, he
cried, "You are the Citoyen Barabant who spoke so well in the Place de
la Grève." He turned to his comrades: "Aye, he can talk, too."
"Bring him in!"
"Citoyen, eat with us."
"Yes, join us, comrade," echoed a swarthy Picard, throwing his arms
about Barabant, who, nothing loath, answered:
"Gladly, citoyens."
They took possession of a corner in the café, calling the other
occupants--two coal-carriers and a seller of lemonade.
While the soup was devoured one or another would turn to Barabant with
a wink or a laugh, crying:
"It was glorious, eh, the taking of the Tuileries?"
"We fought well--the Sans-Culottes."
"The fat Louis was trembling that day!"
As they fell to eating their long loaves of bread, spread with cheese
and washed down with an execrable mixture of wine and water, groups of
two or three sauntered in, to smoke and discuss, among whom Barabant
recognized the Marseillais who had borne him in the square. Javogues,
greeted uproariously, in turn perceived Barabant.
"Why, it is my little orator!" he cried, and was advancing with open
arms to infold him in a bear-like hug, when his eyes encountered the
sling. "Mordieu," he exclaimed, "you were wounded!"
"Slightly."
Contenting himself with a wring of the hand, Javogues settled his body
into a seat opposite, exclaiming: "There is a patriot, citoyens; I'll
vouch for him!"
A chorus of grunts and a bobbing of heads showed Barabant the value of
such an indorsement. Across the table his companions cried to him:
"He's a terrible fellow, eh, the Citoyen Javogues? No hesitation about
him."
"That's the kind of men we want!"
They finished eating, and sprawled back to discuss.
"What I want to know is, where are we going?" Javogues demanded.
"We are going nowhere; we are rooted."
"The Convention does nothing but discuss."
"What's the use of overturning the throne, after all?"
"We must have the Republic!"
"What say you, Citoyen Barabant?"
"I say no step backward!" A lull gave him the attention of the room.
"We must advance or perish. If we lack in daring, we deserve to perish.
The Revolution, comrades, as I see it, is not against an unworthy king
or any king: it is to reconstruct society. Citoyens, there is but one
true end: the Nation must be one family. No more classes, no more
titles, no more king, no more first estate, no more third estate. We
are brothers, brothers all in one family--France!"
"There's the word!" Javogues cried, amid the salvo of glasses and
bravos that acclaimed the speaker. "And out with all lying, plotting
priests!"
A chorus approved.
"Right!"
"That's it!"
"Now you're talking!"
"Curse the blackcoats!"
"What has kept us down all these centuries? What? Tell me that! The
Church! What has been the ally of the aristocrats? The Church! What
taught us to be content with our lot, with fetters, with a crust, with
the yoke of taxation? The Church!"
"Aye, the Church!"
"Down with it!"
"Down with the lie!"
"Bah, the Church! the Church! I too was fool enough to believe in it."
Javogues swept his huge fist over their heads, and crashing it upon the
table, shouted, "There is no God!"
A few mumbled approval, more laughed, while one voice cried:
"There he is again, with his God!"
"I tell you, it is with such superstitions that they enslave us!"
Javogues drew back, defiant and aroused, and assembling his anger, he
thundered again, as though to bear down all opposition, "There is no
God!"
The laughter increased, while another scoffer cried:
"Well, if there is, he does us little good."
To this all agreed. Barabant, smiling, added:
"Citoyen, one thing at a time. Let us depose Capet first."
They arose amid laughter, Javogues's protests lost in the confusion.
Barabant, impelled to enthusiasm by the ardor of these laborers, opened
his arms and exclaimed:
"Comrades, when Frenchmen are united, we fear no foreigner. What nation
has ever fraternized as we? We all are brothers, all working for the
great end. When we grumble at delays, let us not forget what the
Revolution has made us!"
Then the voice of Javogues arose:
"Brothers, before we separate, let us embrace!"
With one impulse, such as countless times animated the populace in
these days of exaltation, the group fell into one another's arms.
Javogues, extending his hands covered with soot, exclaimed:
"Glorious emblems!"
Barabant echoed the cry, but as they moved off he surreptitiously
brushed away the stains, asking, to distract his companion's attention:
"And Dossonville, did you get him?"
"He escaped--for the time."
"Are you sure it was he? Did you see him again?"
"What difference does it make whether I saw him or not?" Javogues
answered impatiently. "I know he was there."
"How?" Barabant asked, in astonishment.
"By the look in his eyes the day I met him. That is all I need to tell
an aristocrat!"
Barabant, seeing the impossibility of swaying the fanatic by reason,
kept silent until they parted.
In the Rue Maugout, la Mère Corniche cried to him from her tenebrous
sentry-box:
"One moment, citoyen." The window-hinges spoke and a shadowy head
appeared. "There's a tall fellow above in your room."
"In the uniform of the National Guard?"
"That's it."
Barabant, who had left Javogues too recently to derive any pleasure
from a visit of Dossonville, was hastening away when again the
querulous voice halted him.
"Not so fast, citoyen."
"Well, what? I'm in a hurry."
"You've seen the Citoyen Marat?"
"Marat?"
"What! you've not presented your letter?"
"Oh, my letter!" Barabant cried, and hastily covering his mistake,
said: "But that was days ago."
"You didn't forget to speak of me?"
"Come, now, la Mère Corniche, I'm not an ingrate!"
"And what did he say?"
"It brought tears to his eyes."
"Truly?"
"Pardi! The Citoyen Marat has a heart."
Barabant, on the staircase, congratulated himself on his escape from
a bad position, little realizing the danger of the present one, and
excusing the subterfuge on the light pretext of giving pleasure to the
old woman. He hurriedly determined to say nothing to Dossonville of his
danger, preferring first to question him.
Dossonville, the greetings over, announced his purpose with the
question:
"Well, young pamphleteer, what have you ready?"
Barabant replied by tapping his arm.
"I see,--at the Tuileries?"
"You were there, of course?"
"What Frenchman wasn't?"
Barabant, noticing the equivocation, pressed him.
"With what section, citoyen?"
"I was with no section."
"Within or without the Tuileries?"
Dossonville rose up.
"Again! I thought you were convinced at Santerre's."
"You do not answer my question," Barabant insisted.
"Why do you ask it?"
"Because, Citoyen Dossonville, there are those who claim to have seen
you among the defenders."
"What's that? Who says that?" At once Dossonville was all alertness.
Barabant repeated, adding: "If it is so, citoyen, no matter for what
reasons you were present, you cannot ignore the danger you run if
recognized."
As though to confirm the warning, the stairway suddenly gave out the
hurried fall of feet, the door opened, and Nicole appeared, breathless
and frightened.
"Citoyen Dossonville," she cried, "I come to warn you! Javogues is
below!"
Dossonville threw a glance to the window, his hand going to his pistol.
Then correcting himself, he said:
"So this is your trap, is it?"
"I am not a spy," Barabant disclaimed indignantly. "You have an escape
by the roof; the gutter is solid; once opposite--"
"Yes, yes," Nicole added; "pass into my room, through the hall, and
out!"
"You mistake me," Dossonville interrupted. "I have nothing to fear. Go
to the landing. They may stop on the way."
Barabant obeyed. Dossonville, turning his back, snatched a paper from
his redingote, rolled it into a ball, and tossed it into the gutter.
He looked a moment at the astonished girl, then shrugging his
shoulders, he committed himself to her mercy with a wave of his hand.
Already from below came the rush of feet. With a sudden inspiration,
Dossonville divested himself of his pistols and sword, laying them
conspicuously on the bed. Then retreating as far away as the room
permitted, he seated himself and folded his arms, facing the horrified
girl with a calm smile, as though to say:
"Dispose of my life!"
Nicole, struggling between her patriotism and her womanly instincts,
heard Barabant calling from the landing:
"Who is there?"
"Javogues."
"What do you seek?"
The next moment half a dozen Marseillais stormed into the room, while
Javogues, at the head, shouted:
"When he moves to escape, shoot him down!"
But on the instant Dossonville, erect and holding out his hands, cried:
"I am unarmed; my weapons are on the bed. I submit. There is no need of
murder. What is the accusation?"
Javogues, baffled at the turn, still greedily covered the prisoner
with his pistol, but his face showed indecision and the longing for a
pretext.