inside his guard by stooping suddenly to one side, grasping at his
blade with her free hand. Dossonville, forced to meet the fury of
the onslaught, a second time presented the point of his blade to her
throat; but this time, so impetuous was her rush that only the instant
withdrawal of the weapon saved her.
"A second time, Louison, I spare you. My gratitude, you see, is
eternal. Louison, you fight too recklessly, you expose yourself. You
rely too much on my sense of gratitude. Hoop-là! Again I had you! If
it's only a matter of a kiss that stands between us, you might give
it back to me. Ha, ha! Well struck, Louison! Where will it end? My
gratitude restrains me, and you must realize what a good fellow you are
trying to end--"
Suddenly, to the astonishment of all, Dossonville included, Louison
halted, panting and heaving, restored the knife to her bosom, and burst
out laughing.
"Dossonville," she cried, flinging out her hand in acclamation, "you're
a man!"
He dropped on both knees, exclaiming: "That word disarms me. Do me the
favor of cutting my neck."
With a movement as swift as her attack, the girl passed to his side,
and, bending suddenly, kissed him on the forehead.
"That one, Dossonville," she cried, "you have deserved."
And with a laugh, she flitted into the street, where the spectators,
respecting her sudden whims, prudently left her an open passage.
III
WAITING FOR BREAD
In this season of famine, when the supply of bread barely sufficed to
feed one half of the population, by six o'clock in the evening long
lines began to form in front of the bakeries, to await through the
long night the morning distribution of loaves. Javogues, who took the
occasion of this assembling to study the crowd for signs of traitors or
faint-hearted republicans, returned each evening, toward five o'clock,
to the Prêtre Pendu in a gale of patriotic ferocity.
But this afternoon, to the astonishment of those who were accustomed to
quail before his glance, his lagging step, his knotted club trailing at
his heels, and his head relaxed on his shoulders gave every appearance
of dejection. At the Prêtre Pendu he sank gratefully into a chair,
covered the table with his arms, and plunged moodily into his thoughts.
Presently, arm in arm, bristling with weapons, in villainous shoes
wound about with strips of rags, appeared three Tapedures,--Cramoisin
the mountebank, Boudgoust the waiter, and Jambony the crier,--thrown
together by the strange tides of the Terror. In the middle, Boudgoust
strode with hang-dog head, as though his height had overshot his
strength. The shriveled, furtive mountebank clung to one arm, while
at the other waddled the bloated, leering cub of the gutters. So
tightly huddled were they that they seemed one unclean body with three
heads--an incongruous union of malignant age, stultified manhood, and
vicious, insolent youth.
Perceiving Javogues silent and absorbed, they slackened their pace, and
Boudgoust said cautiously:
"Cramoisin, he's still in bad humor."
"It's that cursed Dossonville, my little Boudgoust. If it worries him,
why doesn't he get rid of him?"
"Javogues's the devil when aroused," Boudgoust continued
apprehensively. He turned to the boy: "Jambony, throttle that voice of
a carriage-crier and speak softly. It might be best to slip away."
But Javogues, lifting his head, beckoned them.
"Well, watch-dogs, what luck?"
Cramoisin and Jambony looked to Boudgoust, who turned his pockets
inside out, showed the flat of his palms, and answered:
"Nothing."
"An unfortunate day--for all of us," Javogues said gloomily, and
relapsed into bitter reflections on his encounter with Dossonville.
"What luck!" exclaimed Cramoisin. "We escaped easily. Suppose we eat
something."
Jambony opened his mouth, and the voice, trained to rise above the
jargon of the street, resounded from one end of the street to the other.
"Food!"
The invariable bowl of soup and a bottle of thin wine were placed in
front of each. Boudgoust, whose appetite was in proportion to his
length, accomplished his portion in one swallow, and being thus reduced
to philosophizing, exclaimed:
"All citoyens should be made to eat together."
"Nothing new there," Cramoisin interjected querulously. "We have the
Fraternal dinners, haven't we?"
"That amounts to nothing," Boudgoust retorted. He leaned his elbows on
the table, scratching the back of his hands as he talked: "But every
day, every meal. That's democracy! Or, better, no citoyen to eat more
than another! If I saw any one eating meat to-night I'd arrest him.
All citoyens should share alike."
Jambony, having now emptied his bowl, declared in his stentor's voice:
"And I am for equality of dress. No distinction between citoyens on
account of dress! A national costume--one for the men and one for the
women!"
Presently, while he launched into the details of his scheme, a raven,
with a croak and a flap of its wings, hopped from the gloom of the
opposite entrance, followed by the diminutive figure of la Mère
Corniche, who, giving a nod of understanding to the four, installed
herself on a stool and began to knit.
"There's one who's no Girondin," Boudgoust grunted.
"She's a tiger since the death of Marat," Jambony remarked in a
thundering whisper. "She was very devoted. They say--"
And he proceeded to detail one of those fantastic tales which the
Parisian playfully attributed to any woman, were she eighty or eighteen.
Cramoisin, having caressed the last drop in his bowl, now exclaimed:
"Jambony, you are tiresome, you and your national costume. You go
half-way. What we must restore is the primeval innocence!" As he
spoke he pressed a flat thumb on the table, while from under his
eyebrows shot the shrewd dagger glances of the madman. "The primeval
innocence--there only is the truth! Nothing but that can restore
republican simplicity. No clothes at all! A return to the simplicity of
Adam and Eve--the true, the real republicans! There's something that
would be sublime!"
"Allons, Cramoisin, you have too much vanity!" Boudgoust replied.
"Yes, he wants to display his beauty," put in Jambony, who retained the
spirit of raillery gathered at the doors of the theater. "We know that
trick, old fellow."
Cramoisin was beginning a furious answer when Javogues, turning
impatiently, demanded the hour.
"Close to seven."
"They come later every night," Javogues grumbled. He rang the table
with his fist. "Perhaps they think they can hide their guilty faces in
the dusk!"
Presently, from the entrances, people with baskets began to appear,
directing their way toward the Bakery Gobin, a rod below, to take up
the vigil that consumed the night.
Those who passed the Prêtre Pendu waited anxiously their welcome
from the mouth of Javogues, whose salutations varied according to his
estimate of their patriotism.
"Greetings, patriots."
"Greetings, citoyens."
"Greetings."
To some he simply nodded in return. Occasionally he stiffened and,
without recognition, fastened his scrutiny on the eyes of a new
arrival, as though to tear away the mask and wrench forth the secret.
Marching purposely toward them, looking Javogues disdainfully in
countenance, came Goursac. So implacable were the glances the two
enemies exchanged that they seemed to clash midway in the air. Arrived
within ten feet of the group, Goursac turned curtly on his heel and
departed toward the bakery without having recognized them by word or
nod. The Tapedures cursed; Javogues, following him with his glance,
muttered:
"Sacré! Girondin, wait a little longer!"
Several women passed, among them Nicole, who received a friendly
greeting from Javogues, Boudgoust commenting:
"Fine woman that, Cramoisin, for all you say!"
Cramoisin scowled for an answer, following the girl with a glance of
implacable hatred.
"Eh, yes," Jambony added, sinking his voice. "As for me, if it weren't
for Javogues I'd not keep her long chained up to that cursed Barabant."
"Barabant," growled Boudgoust, "is an indulgent. He is forever talking
of mercy."
"He who speaks of mercy in these days," cried Cramoisin, purposely
raising his voice, "is in league with aristocrats. He should be
denounced."
Javogues turned angrily:
"Enough! Barabant is a patriot. I know it!"
Boudgoust, who disliked quarrels, interrupted:
"Hello, who's this brat?"
A girl of six or seven was approaching, carrying in her arms a stool.
Javogues, at once suspicious, stopped her.
"Who sent you out, my little one?"
"Papa."
"And who is your father?"
"The wig-maker there," she said, showing the shop with her small
finger. "He's coming to take my place later."
"Ah, your papa is a good Royalist."
The child, frightened by his looks, remained twisting from side to
side, while Javogues, softening his voice, repeated the question.
The child shook her head.
"What does he say of us?" It was Boudgoust who put the question.
"Don't know."
"But he suffers much with this famine, doesn't he?" suggested
Cramoisin, slyly.
"Oh, yes," she answered, the innocent face brightening. "Papa says we
suffer more now than before."
Cramoisin, triumphant and smiling, drew back; the child toddled on.
"Ah, Citoyen Flaquet," Javogues cried in triumph, "who doesn't dare
pass us in the daylight and who regrets the royalty, we hold you at
last!"
Among the next to leave No. 38 was a girl of sixteen, who, in greeting
Javogues, faltered a little in her walk. It was Geneviève, suddenly
blossomed into a woman. Her eyes, that formerly were too black and
large on her sallow face, were now in fair relief to her cheeks, that
had flushed with the glow of womanhood. She moved lightly, and even the
carelessness of her dress could not conceal the full figure, erect and
flexible. The four men watched her pass on and take her place in the
lengthening line.
"The best of the lot!" Cramoisin said.
"She was ugly enough last year," Boudgoust replied.
"She was not a woman then," retorted the other, who seized the
opportunity to broach his favorite theory. "Women, they're good enough
in their places. They're put here to give men to the world. I believe
in the community of women. No marriage. Women discriminate according to
a man's being old or ugly or poor. All discrimination is unrepublican.
There should be no distinctions."
"Yes, my old fellow, but halt there," Jambony said impudently. "No
community of men."
"Why not?"
"You'd fall to the lot of la Mère Corniche."
Cramoisin angrily resented the interruption. He passed to the
sociological aspect of the reform, and declared that with the Nation
battling against all Europe such a measure was needed to fill in the
gaps of war. Other bottles were brought and torches.
Below at the bakery, two torches disclosed the undulations of the
monstrous queue, but the faces and the outlines of the figures were
confounded in the night. Sometimes a brief song would mount up, a few
whispered communications could be heard, and the steady snoring of a
sleeper.
From there, in the narrow circle of light under the figure of the
priest, which swung in grotesque outlines, the four Tapedures could
be seen, drinking and discussing. At times their voices, impassioned
and drunken, reached the line, the high pitch of Cramoisin crying:
"Primeval innocence! community of women!" or the bellow of Javogues,
"There is no God!" as the four, without listening to one another,
debated furiously their sublime ideas.
From time to time others arrived through the darkness, relieving those
in line. Toward midnight Barabant replaced Nicole. Several of the new
arrivals were fresh from cabarets; many of those whom no one relieved
began in drunken boisterousness to scream upon the night ribald songs
and jests, foul anathemas of the party in disfavor.
The noise of kisses and tipsy laughter became frequent. The women and
children, accustomed to the scene, retired under shawls and sought to
efface themselves against the chilly walls. Some women, more vicious
than their mates, joined in the drunken carnival, which toward three
o'clock, when the torches dropped back into the night, knew no bounds.
And all the while, amid this licentiousness, muffled or in brazen
outcry, the line asleep or cringing, whispering or ribald, waited
stolidly for the dawn.
Shortly after three, Javogues and his body-guard quitted the cabaret
to make the rounds. A single torch held aloft by Boudgoust lit up
the huddled queue. They passed down the line, Jambony and Cramoisin
embracing the women, Javogues compelling all to cry "Vive la Nation!"
and "A bas les Indulgents!" As luck would have it, Cramoisin perceived
the face of Geneviève, which, in her curiosity, she momentarily
displayed.
The drunkard flung himself forward and seized her in his arms. She
defended herself furiously, averting her face, resisting all his
efforts to drag her into the street; until Cramoisin, getting his arm
around her waist, wrenched her forth screaming in her terror:
"Citoyen Javogues, Citoyen Javogues, protect me! Don't let him take me,
Citoyen Javogues!"
Javogues, recognizing the voice, ran up.
"Who've you got there?"
"Don't you see I've got a woman?" Cramoisin said surlily. He added an
obscenity that caused the girl, in despair, to exclaim:
"Oh, Citoyen Javogues, save me, save me!"
"None of that," Javogues cried angrily. "Let her go."
As the drunken Cramoisin started to protest, with a blow of his fist he
knocked him down. Geneviève, carried down in the fall, flung herself at
the feet of Javogues, grasping his knees.
"Thanks, thanks," she cried hysterically. "Citoyen, you are good, you
are kind!"
Then fearing to become too prominent, she hurried to her place,
enveloping her head with a shawl and crouching back into the friendly
obscurity.
Cramoisin, whimpering, disappeared; Javogues, Boudgoust, and Jambony
reeled away. Fatigue stilled even the noisiest. The night was achieved
in sleep.
Toward six the line roused itself, as two inspectors of the
municipality arrived to preside over the distribution of the bread.
The doors were opened and the frantic rush began, those in the rear
crowding forward with frenzied inquiries, which changed into the
familiar shrieks of despair when the doors were closed with a third of
the line unserved.
Geneviève, who had received her maximum of bread among the last,
avoided the outstretched hands of the unsuccessful and escaped up the
street, to where la Mère Corniche, at her post, exacted a tithe from
each lodger. Dropping her tribute in the basket, she was hastening on
when the concierge retained her with the cry:
"The Citoyen Javogues wants you."
Thinking that it was to fetch water from the Seine, the girl sought her
bucket and hastened to the room of the Marseillais. At the sight of
the bucket, Javogues frowned and asked:
"What are you doing with that?"
"Don't you want me to fetch water?"
"No."
"Ah."
"Leave the bucket in the corner."
Geneviève obeyed. Javogues shut the door, returned, and frowned again
as he saw that she was trembling.
"What is the matter?" he said roughly. "Why do you tremble?"
She shook her head.
"Are you afraid of me?" he said, advancing.
"Oh, no."
"Then what is it?"
"I'm glad--that's all."
"True?"
All at once the girl, flinging herself at his feet, caught his hands
and cried:
"I love you, I love you, I love you!"
"What, me!" Javogues cried, amazed, retreating a step. "You love _me_!"
"I adore you. I think of nothing but you. You are my god!"
"There is no God!"
"Yes, when one loves."
"Then you love me--it's true?" he said, raising her to her feet. "Why
do you love me?"
"Why?" She drew a long breath. "You are so big, so heroic!"
Javogues fell back into a chair, repeating:
"Extraordinary! I don't understand."
She threw herself into his arms with the movement of a child, and,
without seeking to conceal her thoughts, repeated a hundred caresses
while he continued to mumble stupidly:
"Extraordinary! Extraordinary!"
Finally her emotion penetrated him. He took her in his hands and held
her from him, she coloring with pleasure at this show of force, which
came to her as a caress.
Suddenly a tremor ran through his immense body, an upheaval out of
which came something gentle and softened. He continued to hold her
before him, without shifting the glance that plunged into her eyes,
while the girl, turning in his grasp, repeated, "Let me go!" for, child
that she was, she divined what was passing in him.
"But why," he repeated stupidly--"why do you love me? I don't
understand. No other woman ever has."
"Because you are so heroic. All the others understand nothing of
poverty and sorrow. You--you understand. You give hope to such as I.
When I hear you speak those sublime thoughts, my heart swells. You too
have suffered; you know the abyss." She added, not without elation: "I
loved you from the first day. I never thought you'd notice me."
"It's true--really true, then--what you say to me?"
For all answer she looked at him and smiled.
"It's curious. I don't understand it," he said at last. "But I believe
I'm beginning to love you."
Then, without quite knowing why, she lowered her eyes.
IV
SIMON LAJOIE
The inhabitants of the Rue Maugout, astounded by the sight of Geneviève
arm in arm with the overshadowing Javogues, had not recovered from the
shock of this evidence of human feeling in their tyrant when the next
day brought them a further surprise.
Toward five in the afternoon Dossonville, with the evident purpose
of impressing his enemies by a new accession of strength, made his
appearance, with a body-guard of two. The onlookers, enjoying the
amazement of the Marseillais, were yet themselves astonished and
perplexed at the incongruity of the new reinforcement.
One, short and contracted, gave the impression that by some mysterious
settling his head had shrunk on his shoulders, his shoulders had moved
toward his waist, and by this gradual process his whole body had been
telescoped into his legs. A huge, flattened nose, or rather beak,
imposed itself upon the yellowish, parched face and empty cheeks,
while from two slits under the overhanging brows, the half-hidden eyes,
without deviating from their forward direction, absorbed the outer
world.
His companion, in contrast to the dragging gait of his fellow, moved in
short steps, picking up his feet. The sharp nose, set as close as is
possible to the perpendicular, pointed the way to the head, which, set
forward on the craning neck, seemed in turn to be running ahead of the
frail body.
Dossonville, with his loose amble and important tilt of head, gave
the cabaret a "Salut!" and continued twirling in his hand for his
only weapon an ivory baton a scant two feet in length. Behind him
the watch-dogs paused, one grim, taciturn, and furtive, the other
loquacious, florid of gesture, and loud, while, as a cur at the
approach of a strange dog draws himself up snarling and apprehensive,
Javogues and the three half started from their chairs.
Satisfied with the discomfiture of the Terrorists, Dossonville led his
followers to the Place de la Revolution, where he found the execution
over and the crowd, with a scattering hand-clap, dispersing.
On the terraces of the Tuileries a few spectators still lingered
curiously, looking down on the scaffold that violently interrupted the
peaceful vista of the woods beyond. Threading his way through the
widening network of women, soldiers, spies, muscadins, and laborers,
Dossonville perceived Louison, who, having at last quitted the
environment of the scaffold, was returning toward the Cabaret de la
Guillotine to dispose of her cockades.
"Well, Louison," he cried, "you have a bored air! It was stupid this
afternoon, then? The show did not interest?"
"Nothing but a priest to-day--all priests die in the same way,"
she answered. "However, yesterday it was better. They guillotined
twin brothers. That was something out of the ordinary." She added
thoughtfully: "It's curious how alike men are on the scaffold."
All at once she perceived the two who had halted obediently at a
distance of twenty paces. Dossonville, when her glance had traveled
from them to him, and back and forth, in amazement and inquiry, opened
his wide mouth and said with pride, indicating them with a flourish:
"Aren't they darlings, though? My assistants, my lambs, my watch-dogs!"
Louison, seized with a sudden, mad laughter, found a moment to say:
"Where, please, did you find such a pair of cutthroats?"
"From the galleys."
"And you trust them?"
"Do you think I'd trust an honest man?" Dossonville exclaimed, with
a laugh that left the girl in doubt as to his seriousness. "What is
an honest man? A man who has not been sufficiently tempted. Give me
the rogue every time. Depend on no man until he is a rogue--a rogue
you hold, by his past. With an honest man you are at the mercy of his
future." He again designated his assistants. "A word from me would send
them to the guillotine. That is the only way to insure tranquillity."
"That's a new theory," Louison exclaimed, much amused. "And there is
sense in it. What do you call them, your trusty rogues?"
"You see the short one with the borrowed legs?" Dossonville answered
proudly. "I call him Le Corbeau, from his beak and blinking eyes.
I picked him up in the Cour des Miracles, ex-beggar, ex-cripple,
ex-thief, hidden in a cellar. I offered him protection from arrest in
return for services. He accepted; I supplied a coat and a hat, and
there he is.
"The other who stands there shaking in the wind is Sans-Chagrin,
ex-priest, recanted and reformed. On the subject of our bargain I
say nothing, only that I dispose of his neck as easily as mine."
Dismissing them by a signal, he took Louison's arm. "Now for us. What
do you say to a drop of something in the Rue de Bourgogne?"
"I say, on to the Rue de Bourgogne!"
At the scaffold they made a detour to escape the contact of blood,
which made the place abhorrent and carried on the shoes of those who
passed in front of the scaffold the red trail for blocks about.
Louison, as they went, was crying her cockades, when suddenly they
were aware of a shrinking and a widening in the crowd, and looking up,
perceived Sanson, the executioner, and his sons advancing, impassive to
all demonstrations. Seized with a mad desire, the girl stepped toward
them, crying:
"A cockade, Citoyen Sanson, a red cockade!"
The next moment Dossonville had jerked her away.
"Mordieu, Louison!" he cried angrily. "Why did you do that?"
"Why not?" she said, laughing. "The Revolution has abolished
prejudices!"
"It cannot change human nature," he retorted. "You can call him
Executor of Public Judgments, Avenger of the Nation, he is always the
executioner." He added frankly, "Louison, ma belle, there are really
moments when you are not human. At an execution you are like granite!"
"Very well, do not notice me."
"That's easy to say," he grumbled. "Besides, I'm curious."
"Indeed."
"Barabant has been telling me about that extraordinary mother of yours."
"Barabant?" Louison said uneasily. "He doesn't like me."
"I like nothing so well as a mystery," Dossonville continued
enthusiastically. "I have three plans already to make her speak."
"Five would do no good."
"Why not?"
"She has left for the provinces."
"Diable!"
"Besides, I do not care to be mysterious," she said impatiently, "and I
do not like to be thought strange."
"Speak no more of it," said Dossonville, though inwardly relinquishing
nothing of his purpose. "In future I'll consider you only as a
commonplace woman."
Louison regarded him maliciously.
"Determine that for yourself."
"Satané de femme!" he exclaimed. "I'll be very careful what I
determine. Louison, you are not a woman who can be loved comfortably. I
tell it to you frankly. The place seems good; let us sit down."
* * * * *
Several nights later, Dossonville, resting on his rounds, was seated
at a table in front of the Café de Valmy, in the Quartier des Bonnes
Nouvelles. The bells had announced the midnight; from the intersections
of the square the streets yawned to him out of the impenetrable
darkness.