The beast he had trained and led was of no such mind. A man called out,
"Die like a man, coward!" A stone or two flew. One struck him. The
storm broke out anew.
"Say thy prayers. Thou art dead. Shall I kill him, monsieur?"
"No, no; not that man--not him!"
"Mercy!" screamed Despard.
"The deuce!" laughed Francois. "It gets warm, monsieur. What to do
with this coward? Keep still, insect!"
The mob had for a little time enough of these terrible swordsmen on the
stair. It was awed, helpless. Below lay, head down or athwart, three
dead men, and certain wounded, unable to crawl. The mob shrank away,
and, with eyes red in the glare, swayed to and fro, indecisive,
swearing. For a moment no more missiles were thrown. They awaited the
expected attack from the rear of the house.
Pierre hung, a limp, inert thing, one arm on the balustrade, the thief's
strong clutch on his neck, making his shivering bulk a shield against
stick and stone.
"It will soon be over," said the marquis, quietly. "There! I thought
so."
A dull roar was heard, and the crash of broken glass from somewhere
behind them.
This signal set loose the cowed mob. Clubs and stones flew. Something
struck Pierre. He squealed like a hurt animal, pain and terror in the
childlike cry. More men crowded in, and the mass, with shout and cry,
surged forward, breaking mirrors and vases, with frantic joy in the
clatter of destruction.
"It is serious this time," cried the marquis. "Adieu, my brave fellow."
Another tapestry flared up, slowly burning. "Let us take toll,
Francois. Come!"
"Good, monsieur! But my fool here--"
At this moment the crowd at the door divided. A dozen soldiers broke
in, and with them the man of the wart--Gregoire.
"_Dame!_" cried Francois; "the Commissioner Gregoire! The wart! It is
time to leave."
"Order, here," shouted Gregoire, "in the name of the law!" The guard
pushed in and made a lane. One or two persistent rioters were collared
and passed out. A dead silence fell on all. The shreds of the tapestry
dropped. The mob fell back.
"Help! help!" cried Pierre.
"_Morbleu!_ dost thou want to die?"
"It is over," said the marquis. "I prefer my peasants."
Gregoire called out, "Where is the mayor?" A reluctant little man
appeared.
"Commissioner, these men have slain citizens," he said.
"And they did well. France wants order. Out with you all, or I shall
fire on you. Citizens indeed! See to that stuff burning."
The peasants, awed, slunk away. Gregoire coolly mounted the stairs.
"Hold!" cried the marquis.
"I arrest thee in the name of the law! Here is my order."
The marquis took it.
"The light is bad," he said; "but I see it is in good form. The law I
obey--and muskets"; and then, in a half-whisper to Francois: "Run! run!
I will hold the stairs."
Gregoire overheard him.
"The citizen _emigre_! I arrest him!" and he went up a step.
"Back!" cried the marquis, lunging fiercely at the too adventurous
commissioner, who leaped down the stairway with the agility of alarm.
"Fire!" he cried.
"Thanks, monsieur; I can help you no more!" cried Francois. As he
spoke, he hurled the unhappy Despard on top of the commissioner. They
fell in a heap. The thief, catching up his rapier, was off and away
through the drawing-room, seeing, as he went, the woman lying on the
floor, her forehead streaming blood. He picked up his cloak and
knapsack, and, followed by Toto, ran for his life down a long corridor
to the left. At the end, he threw open a window, and dropped, with the
dog under his arm, upon the roof of a portico over a side door. No one
was near. He called the dog, and fled through the gardens and into the
woods of the chase.
*XVII*
_Of how Francois, escaping, lives in the wood; of how he sees the
daughter of the marquis dying, and knows not then, or ever after, what
it was that hurt him; of how he becomes homesick for Paris._
The forest was of great extent, and intersected by wood roads. Along
one of these Francois ran for an hour or more, until he was tired, and
had put, as he believed, some miles between himself and the citizen with
the wart. The way became more narrow, the forest more dense. At last
there was only a broad path. Now and then he saw the north star, and
knew that he was traveling southward. He came out at dawn on an open
space, rocky and barren, a great rabbit-warren, as he knew by the sudden
stampede of numberless rabbits. He turned aside into the woods, and a
few hundred yards away found a bit of marsh, and beyond it a brook, with
leaf-covered space beneath tall plane-trees, now bare of foliage. He
drank deep of the welcome water, and sat down with Toto to rest and
think.
"_Mon ami_," he said, "we like adventures; but this was a little too
much." Then he laughed at the thought of Pierre's terror; but the man
with the wart was not so funny, and the poor lady who was St. Cecilia,
and that cold-blooded devil of a marquis--"What a man!"
Here were rabbits for food, and only a forest bed, but, on the whole,
better than the Conciergerie or the Chatelet. He slept long, and was
cold, fearing to make a fire. About eleven next morning he left Toto,
and went with care to the edge of the wood. He heard noises, and saw
boys setting traps; for now my lord's rabbits were anybody's rabbits.
The traps pleased him. He slipped away. At evening, being dreadfully
hungry, he went to the warren, took two rabbits out of the traps, and
went back. The man's patience was amazing: not until late at night did
he make a fire to cook his meat; but Toto, less exacting, was fed at
once with the raw flesh.
A week went by, with no more of incident than I have mentioned. He
explored the woods day after day, and a half-mile away found a farm,
whence at night he took toll of milk, having stolen a pail to aid him.
It was all sadly monotonous, but what else could he do? Once, after a
fortnight, he was bold enough to wander in daylight within the woods
near the chateau. It was apparently deserted; at least, he saw no signs
of habitation; nor, later at night, when he went back, were there
lights, except in one room on the ground floor.
Francis approached with caution, and, looking through a window, saw an
old man seated by the fire. Making sure that he was alone, the wanderer
tapped on the pane. The man at the hearthside looked up, and Francois
saw, as he had suspected, that he was the majordomo. Again Francois
tapped, and observing the inmate move toward the door, he hurried
thither. As they met, Francois hastened to say that he was the man who
aided the marquis, having himself had the luck to escape. Once
reassured, the old majordomo urged Francois to enter. But this he would
not do. He had had enough of house-traps. In the forest they would be
secure. To this the servant agreed, and followed him at once. When at
last in the woodland shelter, Francois asked: "What of the marquis?" He
had been taken by Gregoire toward Paris, but was said to have made his
escape. "A hard man to hold is my master; and as to the village, it has
had to pay right dearly, too." Pierre had been arrested, but was soon
set free. And the little gentleman? He had been taken to a cousin's
house in eastern Normandy. Francois hesitated over his final question;
he himself could not have told why.
[Illustration: "THE WANDERER TAPPED ON THE PANE."]
"And Mme. Renee?" he exclaimed, and bent forward, intent.
"The countess?"
"I did not know. Is she a countess? Mme. Renee--what of her?--she who
was hurt. I passed her; she lay on the upper stair. There was
blood--blood. The little boy cried to me to help her. My God! I could
not. I--tell me, was she badly hurt?"
"She is dying, monsieur. Something--a gauntlet, they say--struck her
head. She has known no one since."
"Where is she?"
"In the chateau, with a maid and her aunt. She was too ill to be taken
away. She is dying to-night. They say she cannot last long. God rest
her soul! 'T is the end of everything."
The thief stood still a minute; then he said resolutely, "I must see
her." This the old servant declared impossible; but when Francois swore
that he would go alone, he finally consented to show him the way,
insisting all the time that he would not be let in.
In a few minutes they were moving down a long corridor on the second
floor. All was dark until the majordomo paused at a door under which a
line of light was to be seen. Here he knocked, motioning his companion
to keep back a little. The door opened, and a gaunt middle-aged lady
came forth.
"What is it?" she said.
"This man--this gentleman would see the countess."
"What do you want?" she said, facing Francois. "My niece is
dying--murdered. You have done your cruel work. Would you trouble the
dead?"
"Madame," said Francois, "I am he who held the stair with the marquis.
I am no Jacobin. I shot the man who wounded the countess."
"You! He is dead."
"Thank God! May I see the lady?"
"She is dying; why should you see her?"
"Madame, I am a poor unhappy thief. Once this lady offered me help--a
chance, a better life. I was a fool; I let it go by. I--let me see
her."
"Come in," said the gentlewoman; and, with no more words, he entered
after her, and approached the bed, leaving his dog outside. What he
beheld he neither forgot nor, I believe, save in his memoirs, ever spoke
of to any one.
He saw a white face on the pillow; a deep-red spot on each cheek; eyes
with the glaze of swift-coming death. He fell on his knees beside her,
and stayed motionless, watching the sweat on the brow, the breath
quicken and then stop as if it would not come again. At last he touched
the hand. It was cold, and he withdrew his own hand, shrinking back.
He had seen death, but no death like this. He said, "Madame." There
was no answer. He looked up at the older woman. "She is dying; she
does not hear."
[Illustration: "HE SAW A WHITE FACE ON THE PILLOW."]
"No; nor ever will in this world."
He turned, bent down, and kissed the fringe of the coverlet. Then he
arose, shaken by the strongest emotion life had brought to him.
"I thank you," he said, and moved to the door. He paused outside.
"Are you sure the beast is dead--the man who did that--that?"
"Yes."
"I am sorry--sorry." He shook his long arms in the air. "I should like
now to kill him again--again!" He walked swiftly away, and, not waiting
for the servant, left the house and found his way back to his forest
shelter.
All night long he sat without a fire, indifferent to poor Toto's efforts
to get a little notice, not feeling the cold, a sorely wounded man, with
a scar on his memory which no after happiness could ever erase.
The next night he found the majordomo, and learned that the countess was
dead. He took away blankets and the provisions bountifully supplied,
and once more rejoined his dog.
In this manner the last days of February were passed; and in March the
spring began to appear, but with it a new peril. The woodmen went here
and there at work, and thrice he narrowly escaped being seen. Early in
April his friend the majordomo disappeared, and the great chateau was
infested with men who came and went--for what he knew not.
He began to be troubled with a feverish desire to see the streets of
Paris. At last he made up his mind to leave his forest shelter; and
sometime in April, having hesitated long, he set out. He hid all day in
woods, and walked at night, until he reached the Seine. With this as a
guide, he went on, robbing hen-houses of eggs, and milking cows, until
he was close to Paris. How to enter it he did not know. The times were
doubly dangerous. Spies and suspicion were everywhere to be dreaded.
His papers had no certifications from the places he was presumed to have
visited. Formidable in the background he saw the man Gregoire, the
commissioner with the wart of ill luck.
How the thief and his dog lived near to Paris in woods and fields, there
is no need to tell in detail. The month of June was come in this year of
1793. Marat was ill, and Charlotte Corday on her way to forestall the
decree of nature. La Vendee was up. The Girondists had fallen, the
great cities of the South were in uproar, the enemy was on the frontier,
and the rule of France in the competent and remorseless hands of the
Committee of Public Safety. All around Paris the country was infested
with wandering people who, for the most part, like Francois, had good
reason to fear. There were beggars, thieves, persecuted nobles, those
who had no mind to face the foe as volunteers. Now and then Francois,
ever cautious, picked up a little news on a scrap of gazette found by
the wayside. He read that Citizen Amar was of the Great Committee of
General Security. Francois laughed.
"Toto, dost thou think this will add to thy master's security? That was
the gentleman with the emigrative mouth. _Ami_, he is still alive.
They must be tough, these Jacobins. What fun, Toto! I can see him
pinned to the door like a beetle, and that marquis with a face, Toto,
like a white plaster cast those Italians used to sell.
"I like not M. Amar. Toto, we are unhappy in our acquaintances. But
the man of the wart is the worst." This was Francois's black beast;
why, he could not have said. Amar, _le farouche_, was really a more
fatal foe. The citizen who dressed neatly, and wore spectacles over
green eyes, and was in debt to the conjurer for a not desirable forecast
of fortune, was a yet more sinister acquaintance. Yet it was Citizen
Gregoire who came to Francois in dreams, and the bare thought of whom
could chop short a laugh as surely as Mother Guillotine, the merciless.
*XVIII*
_Wherein is told how Francois reenters Paris, and lodges with the Crab;
and of how Toto is near to death by the guillotine. Francois meets
Despard and the marquis, who warns him and is warned._
A few days later, when lying behind a deserted hut at dusk, Francois
heard a noise of military music, and ventured forth on the road leading
to the barrier. Many hundreds of the wounded from the frontier were
passing, in wagons or on foot. The communes and clubs were out to meet
them. The cabarets outside of the gate poured forth a noisy company.
The road was full. Who should stop the free citizens or the ladies of
the fish-market, come to welcome patriot volunteers? Here was an escort
of troops, wild, triumphant greeting of captured Austrian flags, many
wounded in wagons, many more afoot, marching wearily. Those who walked
the people must aid. The ranks were soon broken, and all was
good-natured tumult. Here was help for heroes--wine, bread, eager aid
of an arm. Some who were dragging along on crutches, to get a little
relief from jolting wagons, were hoisted, to their discomfort, on the
shoulders of friendly patriots not eager to volunteer.
Francois, tucking Toto under his cloak, edged himself into the broken
ranks of the heroes of Hondschoote and Wattignies. "We are many," he
said to a man beside him, as tattered as he, for there was scarcely a
rag of uniform. "Jolly to get home again!"
"_Sacre!_ not if they guillotined thy father a week ago."
"_Dame!_ is that so? But patience, and hold thy tongue, citizen.
_Tonnerre!_ my leg." He was limping.
"Thy shoulder, friend"--to a blouse. "_Tiens!_ that is better. The
Austrian bullets have a liking for one's bones. Crack! crack! I can
hear them yet. They do not spare the officers any more than they do the
privates."
Should they carry the citizen officer--take care of his sword? Francois
thanked them; the citizens must be careful of his leg; and there was
Francois on the shoulders of two big Jacobins, like a dozen more; for it
was who should help, and a shouting, good-humored crowd. Francois was
not altogether well pleased at his elevation; he dropped forward his too
well-known face. There was a jam at the barrier. Had these citizen
soldiers their passes, as provided? Francois was weak; he suffered,
poor fellow! The Jacobins and the women roared derisively: "Passes for
heroes?" All order was lost. They were through, and in the Rue
d'Enfer. Would the good citizens let him walk? He was heavy, and they
were pleased to be relieved of one hundred and ninety-five pounds of
wounded hero.
Meanwhile there was some renewed order in the broken formation; yet now
and then men fell out to meet sweethearts or friends, usually coming
back again to the ranks. The hint was good.
"_Ciel!_ comrade, there is my mother!" The crowd gave way as the hero
hobbled out of the line. He called out: "_Mere, mere_--mother! Here!
'T is I--Adolphe. The deuce! she is so deaf."
Where was she? Citizens were eager to help him.
"Ah," he cried, "she saw me not"; and, turning into a side street near
the asylum, limped painfully in pursuit of the mother who was afflicted
with deafness. Toto followed. Once around a corner, the lameness
disappeared. In the gathering dusk he set out for the Cite.
"It must be Quatre Pattes, Toto. Come along. A bad year, my friend, to
have lost a father and a mother. No matter; we are in Paris."
He loved the streets. "Ah, there is Notre Dame and the river!" He was
happy, and went along laughing, and at last turned into a small cafe
near to his old home in the Rue des Chanteurs.
He was tired and hungry, and, as he agreeably remembered, well off,
having had small chance to spend the money with which he had been
generously provided by Achille Gamel. The bread and cheese were good,
and the wine was not bad. He asked for tobacco and a pipe. Would the
host find him "L'Ami du Peuple"? He was a sublieutenant, wounded on the
frontier; but, _dame!_ to get home was happiness.
Two men sat down by him, and talked. Good Jacobins were these, in the
dirty uniforms of the sansculotte army which kept Paris in order at the
rate of forty sous a day. "Bad wages, citizen lieutenant," they said.
The hero of the frontier was worse off--no pay for three months. He
related his battles; and now he must go.
"Come, Toto." Toto had been wounded at Wattignies; he was well now, and
would be promoted. "_Bon soir_, comrades." In fact, he was wildly gay,
glad to be back in Paris.
He paused, at last, before a house of the date of Henri II. Its heavy,
narrow door, and a slit in the wall for a window, told of days when
every man's house was a fortress.
"It is our best chance, Toto; but best may be bad. We must do
something." He jingled the bell. The cord was drawn by the concierge
within, so as to lift the latch, and Francois entered the hall. To
right was the Crab's den, and there within was Quatre Pattes. He saw
the thin purple nose, the bleared red eyes, the bearded chin, and the
two sticks.
"_Mille tonnerres!_ my child, it is thou. And where hast thou been?
There is no thief like thee. Come and laugh for thy old mother." She
welcomed him in thieves' slang, vile, profuse, and emphatic. Had he any
money? Yes, a little; business was good in the provinces; and would she
house him? Here was a louis d'or for _maman_; and what was this
abominable _carte de surete_, this new trap? She explained. He need
have no fear; she would get him one. He had been in bad company, she
had heard; for a Jacobin had told her of the fencing-school, and
thither, too late, she had gone to get a little help. He had nearly
killed Amar, _le farouche_, and that injured citizen was said to desire
his society. But that was long ago; and Paris lived fast, and was gay,
and forgot easily.
Francois had no wish to refresh Citizen Amar's memory. He asked lightly
if she had ever seen Gregoire, the commissioner to Normandy?
Mme. Quatre Pattes had never seen him. He was of the Great Committee--a
patriot of the best, like herself. Did he know Gregoire? He told her
frankly that he had been arrested by Gregoire, and had escaped.
"Thou art the first, my child!" she cried, her jaws champing as if she
were eating. "Thou hast a fine taste in the choosing of enemies. I
would not be in thy skin for a hundred louis; and now a cat of the night
thou must be. I can hide thee awhile; and if thou dost feed me well,
the mama-crab will care for thee. No one need know thou art here.
Come, get thee a few louis, and we will buy a fine card of safety, and
christen thee to suit. Ha, ha! my little one!" and she beat with her
sticks on the floor.
[Illustration: QUATRE PATTES.]
Our thief was now back in his garret, having lost as many fair chances
of prosperity as did Murad the Unlucky. He reflected much in these late
autumn months of 1793, being for his wants rich, and therefore in no
necessity to give a thought to methods of getting his daily diet.
During the daytime Quatre Pattes insisted on his secluding himself in
his garret. At night he left Toto with the Crab, who fed him well, and
was therefore liked by a revolutionary dog without prejudices. From
these night prowls Francois returned with sad complaints of the way the
republicans guarded their slim purses; in fact, at this time he avoided
adventures, stole from no one, and gave of his lessening store what
barely contented Mme. Quatre Pattes. Were I to say that his goodness
came from newly acquired views of life, I should mislead. He was as
honest as ever, which is to say he took no thought at all as to ethical
questions. We are said to be children of circumstance, which may be
described as the environment of the hour. This is true of the feeble;
but character was the more despotic parent in this resolute man, who
could wrestle strenuously with circumstance. He was a Royalist because
he liked show and color and the fine manners of the great; in the past
he stole because he knew no other way to live. His admirable health was
a contribution to his natural cheerfulness. He still had simple
likings--for the country, for animals, and would have had for books had
they been easy to get, or had he known how to get those which would have
fed his mind and had sauce of interest.
His surroundings would have surely and hopelessly degraded a less
permanent character, and a nature without his ingrained gaiety would
have taken more steadily some thought of the far future. He knew too
well how the thief's life ended: the galleys, the wheel, the lonely
death-bed in the hospital. If he reflected on it at all, as he seems to
have done at this time, it was because of his long, weary days in the
attic. The immediate future at this period did disturb him, but never
long. He liked to talk, and, lacking society, talked more and more to
himself aloud, with Toto for an audience which never ceased to attend.
He who is pleased with his own talk cannot easily be bored; and so he
talked, until Quatre Pattes, who loved keyholes and to listen, thought
he must be out of his head. She herself was always either silent or
boisterous, and was as to this like other beasts of prey. When in
calamity Francois was too busy to be serious. When at ease the
mirthfulness of his natural man forbade argument as to what the dice-box
of to-morrow would offer; for to laugh is to hope, and Francois, as we
know, laughed much, well, and often.
There were many times in his life when to have been honestly loved by a
woman capable of comprehending both his strength and his weakness would,
I think, have given him the chance to live a better life. But how was
this possible to one who lived as he lived--who was what he was?
To be merely liked was pleasant to Francois, and appealed with the most
subtle form of flattery to his immense self-esteem. The man was
sensitive, and in after days, when in an atmosphere of refinement, would
never speak of the terrible women he had known too well in the Cite.
Having no longer the distraction of the streets, he was at present
condemned to live long hours with no society but that of Toto and the
animal Quatre Pattes. He bought a small field-glass, and studied the
habits of his neighbors far and near, and once more took interest in the
feline owners of the roof-tops. Quatre Pattes fed him well, and brought
him some of the old gazettes.
He read how, on that frightful 5th of September, now past, one of the
five complementary days of the republican calendar, on motion of
Barrere, "Terror" was decreed by the Convention to be the order of the
day. It was indeed the birth-hour of the Terror. The Great Committee
was in power. The revolutionary tribunals were multiplied. The law of
suspected persons was drawn with care by the great jurist Merlin of
Douai. Behind these many man-traps was the Committee of Public Safety,
with despotic power over the persons of all men, and in full control of
the prisons. To it the subcommittees reported arrests; it secured the
prisoners who were to be tried; it saw to the carrying out of all
sentences; it kept the peace in Paris with an array of sansculottes, and
fed the guillotine daily. Of this stern mechanism, strong of head and
incapable of pity, was Pierre Andre Amar; as, one day, Francois read
with his full share of the Terror. There was soon enough of it to
supply all France.
Before November came, Francois, pretending to have been in luck,
supplied the Crab with six louis. She exacted two more, and how much she
kept none may know. He had very few left.
She was as good as her word. "Here, my little one, is the _carte de
surete_ from the committee of this section." The description was taken
from his passport. He was no more to be Francois, but Francois Beau.
If he would denounce one or two people, the committee would indorse his
card as that of "a good patriot who deserved well of the country."
There was the lame cobbler over the way, who talked loosely, and to whom
the Crab owed money; that would be useful and convenient. Francois
shivered all down his long back; he would see. Meanwhile, as he
considered, Quatre Pattes twisted her bent spine, rattled her two
sticks, and looked up at him sidewise with evil eyes, bidding him have a
care, and not get his good mama into trouble, or else, or else--Francois
felt that some night he might have to wring that wrinkled neck. He was
uneasy, and with good reason.
He could bear the confinement no longer, and in December began to find
his cash getting low. He had let his beard grow, and taken to long,
tight pantaloons and a red cap. He felt that, come what might, he must
take the risks of daylight.
The chances against him were small. The numberless denunciations of the
winter fell chiefly on the rich, the rash in talk, the foes of the
strong heads who were ably and mercilessly ruling France. The poor, the
obscure, and the cautious bourgeoisie were as a rule safe until, in the
spring, something like a homicidal mania took possession of Robespierre
and others, who, although they were the most intelligent of the Great
Committee, were never in control of a steady majority, and began to fear
for their own heads.
Outwardly Paris was gay. The restaurateurs made money; the people were
fed by levies of grain on the farmers; and the tumbrel, on its hideous
way, rarely excited much attention. The autumn and winter of '93 were
not without peril or adventure for the thief. The Palais d'Egalite, once
royal, was his favored resort, and with his well-trained sleight of hand
he managed to justify the name of the place by efforts to equalize the
distribution of what money was left to his own advantage and to the
satisfaction of the Crab.
The dark drama went on; but, except the tricoteuses who, like Quatre
Pattes, went daily to see the guillotine at work, comparatively few
attended this daily spectacle. Paris, wearied of crime and too much
politics, was tired of the monotony of slaughter, which had now no
shadow of excuse.
"Would the citizen miss the death of the Austrian, the ex-queen?" He
would not; he knew better than to say no to Quatre Pattes. Would he go
with her? She could get him a good place, and all Paris would be there.
All Paris was not to his desire. He said he would go alone. A walk
with this four-footed creature and the rattle of her becketing sticks he
liked not. He called his dog, and, avoiding the vast assemblage on the
Place of the Revolution, found his way to the Rue St. Honore.
He stood in a crowd against a house. The tumbrel came slowly, and,
because of the surging mass of people, paused opposite to him. He
looked about him. In a group at a window on the far side of the street
he saw a man apparently sketching the sad figure in the cart. It seemed
devilish to this poor outcast of the Cite. His face flushed; he asked
who that was in the window, at which many were staring. The man he
addressed was in black, and looked to be an ex-abbe.
"My son," he said quietly, and with no evidence of caution--"my son, 't
is David the painter, he of the Great Committee. He hath no heart; but
in another world he will get it again, and then--"
"Take care!" said Francois. The shouting crowd cried: "Messalina! Down
with the Austrian!"
Francois looked, and saw the bent figure seated in the cart. Pale it
was, with a red spot on each cheek, haggard; her gray hair cut close,
pitiful; with pendent breasts uncorseted, lost to the horrors of the
insults hurled at her abject state. Francois moved away, and the
tumbrel went rumbling on. An hour later he was crossing the broad
Elysian Fields amid the scattered crowd. It was over, and few cared.
The booths were selling toy guillotines. Of a sudden he missed Toto.
He called him, and, hearing him bark, pushed in haste into a large tent
filled with women and children and with men in blouses.
"The citizen has not paid," cried the doorkeeper. Francois saw Toto
struggling in the hands of a red-bearded man who was crying out: "Enter!
enter! Trial and execution of an _emigre_ dog. _Voila_, citizens! Range
yourselves." There was the red guillotine, the basket, the sawdust, and
poor Toto howling. It was a spectacle which much amused the lower class
of Jacobins. "_A bas le chien aristocrate!_"
Francois advanced with his cheerful smile. "The citizen is mistaken; it
is my dog."
"Where is his _carte de surete_?" laughed the man. "Up with him for
trial!"
Four monkeys were the judges. Jeers and laughter greeted Francois: "No,
no; go on!"
He caught the man by the arm. The fellow let fall Toto, who made a
hasty exit.
"I denounce thee for an enemy of the republic!" cried the showman.
"Seize him! seize him!" Francois broke away, and, using his long arms,
reached the entrance. There was no earnest desire to stop him. The
doorkeeper caught him by the collar. He kicked as only a master of the
_savate_ knows how to kick, and, free of the grip, called to Toto, and
plunged into a crowd which made no effort to recapture him. He moved
with them, and soon turned to cross the river.
Midway on the bridge he came face to face with Despard. He was ragged
and fleshless, the shadow of the well-fed Jacobin he had last seen in
the chateau of Ste. Luce.
"_Ciel!_" exclaimed Francois, "thou art starved." He had no grudge
against his old partner, but he fully appreciated the danger of this
encounter.
He was comforted by the man's alarm. "Come," said Francois, and took
him into a little drinking-shop. It was deserted at this time of day.
He easily drew out all he desired to know. Mme. Renee was assuredly
dead; and he who threw the gauntlet, the butcher, dead also; and three
or more on the fatal stairway. Gregoire had punished the village
severely; heads had fallen. Pierre's friend Robespierre had abandoned
him, had even threatened him--Pierre! but he had escaped any worse fate.
He was half famished; and would Francois help him? Francois ordered
bread and cheese and wine. He would see what next to do. And what of
the marquis? He had not appeared in the lists of the guillotined; but
he might readily have died unnamed, and escaped Francois's notice.
"No," said Pierre, sadly; "he lives. Of course he lives. The devil
cannot die. He got away from Gregoire. Who could keep that man? But
for thee and the accursed commissioner, I should have had my revenge.
We shall meet some day."
"Shall I find him for thee?"
"_Dame!_ no. Let us go out. I am uneasy; I am afraid."
"But of what?"
"I do not know. I am afraid. I am accursed with fear. I am afraid as
a man is in a dream. Somewhere else I shall cease to fear. Let us go."
He was in a sweat of pure causeless terror, the anguish of an emotion
the more terrible for its lack of reason. It was the inexplicable
torment of one of the forms of growing insanity. Francois looked on,
amazed and pitiful. The man's eyes wandered here and there; he got up,
and sat down again, went to the door, looked about him, and came back.
At last, as Francois began to consider how to be free of a dubious
acquaintance, Pierre said drearily:
"Is it easy to die? I should like to die. If I were brave like thee, I
should drown myself."
"Ah, well," laughed Francois, "there is the guillotine--short and
comfortable."
"Thou wilt not denounce me?" he cried, leaping to his feet. "I have my
_carte_; I will let thee see it." He was like a scared child.
"Nonsense!" cried Francois, with good-humored amusement. "I must go.
Here is a gold louis. Why dost thou not rob a few Jacobins?"
"Hush! I dare not; I was brave once. Thou didst save me once; help me
now. Thou wilt not let me starve?"
"No, indeed. I? Not I. Take care of thy louis; they are scarce. Meet
me here at this hour in a week. Adieu. At this hour, mind."
"Art thou going to leave me alone?"
Francois was grieved, but could not remain, and hastened away, while
Pierre looked after him with melancholy eyes.
"Come, Toto," he said, as he turned a corner. "The man is mad. Let us
thank the _bon Dieu_ we never have had a wife; and the rest of our
relatives we have buried--papa and mama, and all the family."
It was not in the man to forget, and a week later he cautiously entered
the little cafe to keep his engagement. It was noisy. To his surprise,
he saw Pierre declaiming lustily to half a dozen blouses.
"Ah!" he cried, seeing Francois, "_mon ami_, here is a seat. There is
good news from the frontier. A glass for the citizen." Clink, clink.
"A vous*. Death to royal rats!" He went on in a wild way until the
workmen had gone, and Francois stopped him with:
[Illustration: "'DEATH TO ROYAL RATS!'"]
"What the deuce has come to thee?"
"Oh, nothing. I have had one of the fits you know of; I am always
better after them. _Diable!_ no marquis could scare me to-day. I saw
him last week, I did. I followed him. It is he who would have been
scared. I--I missed him in a crowd. In a minute I should have had him,
like that," and he turned a glass upside down so as to capture a fly
which was foraging on the table--"like _that_," he repeated
triumphantly.
Francois watched him, and saw a flushed face, tremulous hands, staring
eyes.
"He is afraid; he can't get out"; and the man laughed low, pointing to
his prisoner.
"And thou wouldst have denounced him?" said Francis.
"Why not? He is one of them. He is hell; he is the devil! I saw no
officers to help me."
"Thou art cracked; thou wilt denounce me next."
Pierre looked at Francois with unusual steadiness of gaze, hesitated,
and replied:
"I thought of it; you are all for these people."
Francois, in turn, looked his man over curiously. He had now a queer
expression of self-satisfied elation. "A good joke, that," said
Francois. "Wait a moment; I left Toto outside." He went to the door,
and looked up and down the street. "Wait," he cried to Pierre. "Hang
the dog!" And in an instant he had left the citizen to abide his
return. Once in his garret, he cried: "Toto, thou hast no sense. The
sane scoundrels are bad enough, but why didst thou fetch on me this
crazy rascal? And so the marquis got away, Toto. The man with the wart
is not as clever as I thought him. But some folks have luck."
The sad winter of the Terror wore on, while Francois continued to live
unmolested, and pursued his estimable occupation always with an easy
conscience, but often with an uneasy mind.
It was near the end of the pleasant month of May, 1794--the month
Prairial of the new calendar. The roses were in bloom. The violets
were seeking sunshine here and there, half hidden in the rare grasses of
the trampled space of the Place of the Revolution. On the six bridges
which spanned the canals, its boundaries, children were looking at the
swans. In the middle space, the scaffold and cross-beams of the
guillotine rose dark red against the blue sky of this afternoon of
spring. Two untidy soldiers marched back and forth beside it. The
every-day tragedy of the morning was over; why should the afternoon
remember? The great city seemed to have neither heart nor memory. The
drum-beat of a regiment going to the front rang clear down the Quai des
Tuileries. People ran to see; children and their nurses left the swans.
The birds in the trees listened, and, liking not this crude music, took
wing, and perched on the beams of the monstrous thing in the center of
the Place.
Francois crossed the open ground, with Toto close to heel. The keeper
of the little cafe where he liked to sit had just told him that the
citizen with whom he had twice come thither had been asking for him, and
that with this citizen had also come once a stout man, who would know
where Citizen Francois lived. This last was of the fourth section, one
Gregoire, a man with a wart.
"Thou didst notice the man?" said Francois, much troubled.
"Notice him? I should think so. _Dame_! I am of the Midi. A wart on
a man's nose is bad luck; the mother of that man saw a cocatrice egg in
the barn-yard."
"A cocatrice egg! What the mischief is that!"
"_Tiens!_ if you were of the Midi, you would know. When a hen cackles
loud, 't is that she hath laid a great egg; the father is a basilisk."
"_Tonnerre!_ a basilisk?"
"Thou must crush the egg, and not look, else there is trouble; thy next
child will have warts, or his eyebrows will meet, and then look out!"
Francois's superstition was vastly reinforced by this legend.
"_Mon Dieu!_" he cried; "he hath both." This Francois was a bold man
when he had to meet danger face to face, but, like a child as to many
things, afraid where a less imaginative man would have been devoid of
fear.
Just now he had been turning over in his mind the chance of the Crab's
betraying him. She had been prowling about his garret, and had stolen a
well-hidden score of francs. He dared not complain. What scant
possessions he had would fall into her claws if at any minute she might
choose to denounce him. Of late, purses were too well guarded. The
display of luxury in lace handkerchiefs and gold seals no longer
afforded an available resource. Except Robespierre, who defied popular
sentiment, few men carried two watches. Quatre Pattes had the appetite
of a winter wolf, and was becoming more and more exacting. She asked
why he did not sell his rapier. If it were known that he withheld
weapons such as the republic claimed, there might be trouble. Why had
he not given up his pistols? They were gold-mounted, and had belonged
to a grandee of Spain. Why not sell them? They would fetch a deal of
money.
He was not inclined to part with his arms, and least of all with his
rapier. At last he gave her one pistol, which she sold; the other he
hung high up on a peg set within the chimney, having hidden in its
barrel the precious little document he had captured from Citizen
Gregoire in that pleasant inn on the Seine, where an agreeable evening
had ended with such unaccountable abruptness.
Next to the Crab's treachery, he feared most to meet Despard when the
Jacobin should chance to be in one of those aggressive moods which were
so puzzling to Francois. But above all did he dread Gregoire, and grew
terrified as he reflected on that business of the cocatrice egg and the
basilisk.
It seemed as though he were doomed, and this most cheery of men became
distinctly unhappy. "That _sacre_ basilisk!" he muttered, and, less on
guard than usual, wandered on, taking stock of his perplexities.
Near to the foundations of the Madeleine, where work had long since
ceased, he paused to recreate himself with a puppet-show. The
vanquished fiend was Citizen _Jean Boule_. He was soon guillotined. The
crowd was merry, and Francois, refreshed, contributed his own share of
appreciative mirth. In the throng he unluckily set his big foot on the
toes of a little Jacobin dressed in the extreme of the fashions these
gentry affected. The small man was not to be placated by Francois's
abundant excuses, and demanded the citizen's card of safety. It was an
everyday matter. No one dared to refuse. There were half-insane men,
in those times, who satisfied their patriotism by continually exacting
cards from timid women or from any well-dressed man. To decline was to
break the law. Francois obeyed with the utmost civility. The little
man returned the card.
"The citizen is of the best of the sections, but, _sacre!_ he is heavy."
Much relieved, Francois went on. In the Rue St. Honore the corner of a
lace handkerchief invited a transfer, and lace handkerchiefs were rare.
As there was a small, well-occupied group looking through a shop-window
at a caricature of Mr. Pitt, the occasion appeared propitious, and the
handkerchief changed owners.
A minute later a man touched Francois's shoulder.
"Thy card, citizen!"
"The deuce!" said the thief, as he turned. "This gets monotonous. _Mon
Dieu_, the marquis!" he exclaimed.
"Hush! Your card. You are followed--watched. There is this one
chance." Francis produced his card. The marquis murmured, "Take care;
obey me." Holding the card in his hand, he called authoritatively to a
municipal guard who was passing. The man stopped, but no one else
paused. Curiosity was perilous.
"This good citizen is followed by that man yonder--the one with the torn
bonnet. I know the citizen. Here is his card and mine. Just tell that
fellow to be careful"; and he slipped his own card of safety into the
guard's hand, and under it three louis. The guard hesitated; then he
glanced at the card.
"'T is in order, and countersigned by Vadier of the Great Committee.
These spies are too busy; I will settle the fellow. Good morning,
citizens."
They moved away quietly, in no apparent haste. As they were turning a
corner, the thief looked back.
"I am a lost man, monsieur!" He saw, far away, the man of the torn red
bonnet, and with him Quatre Pattes. She was evidently in a rage. He
understood at once. In the thieves' quarter denunciations were not in
favor. She knew too well the swift justice of this bivouac of outcasts
to risk being suspected as a traitor to its code. The night before, he
had been unable to give her money, and had again refused to sell his
weapons. She had angrily reminded him that he was in her power, and he
had for the first time declared that he would let the Cite settle with
her. He had been rash, and now, too late, he knew it.
He hastily explained his sad case to the disguised gentleman, and was on
the point of telling him that this Quatre Pattes was that Mme. Quintette
who had once been his agent, and would probably be an enemy not to be
despised. He glanced at the marquis, and, wisely or not, held his
tongue.
"We must part here," said the gentleman. He had hesitated when chance
led him to the neighborhood of the thief in trouble; but he was a
courageous man, and disliked to owe to an inferior any such service as
Francois had more than once rendered him. Vadier's sign manual on his
own card of safety was an unquestioned assurance of patriotism; it had
cost him a round sum, but it had its value.
When he said, "I must leave you," the thief returned:
"I am sorry, monsieur; I know not what to do or where to go."
"Nor I," replied Ste. Luce, coldly. "Nor, for that matter, a thousand
men in Paris to-day." He had paid a debt, and meant to be rid of a
disreputable and dangerous acquaintance. "Better luck to you!" he
added.
"May I say to monsieur, who has helped me, that Despard is in Paris, and
has seen him?"