The Project Gutenberg eBook, In the Name of Liberty, by Owen Johnson

IN THE NAME OF LIBERTY

BARABANT SURPRISES NICOLE

IN THE NAME
OF LIBERTY
A STORY OF THE TERROR
BY
OWEN JOHNSON
Author of "Arrows of the Almighty"
O Liberty! Liberty! how many crimes are committed
in thy name! Madame Roland

NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1905

Copyright, 1905, by
The Century Co.
Published January, 1905
THE DEVINNE PRESS

TO
MY FATHER

CONTENTS

PART II
(One Year Later)

IN THE NAME OF LIBERTY

I
IN SEARCH OF THE REVOLUTION

In the month of August of the year 1792 the Rue Maugout was a distorted cleft in the gray mass of the Faubourg St. Antoine, apart from the ceaseless cry of life of the thoroughfare, but animated by a sprinkling of shops and taverns. No. 38, like its neighbors, was a twisted, settled mass of stone and timber that had somehow held together from the time of Henry II. The entrance was low, pinched, and dank. On one side a twisted staircase zig-zagged into the gloom. On the other a squat door with a grating in the center, like a blind eye, led into the cellar which la Mère Corniche, the concierge, let out at two sous a night to travelers in search of an economical resting-place. Beyond this rat-hole a murky glass served as a peep-hole, whence her flattened nose and little eyes could dimly be distinguished at all hours of the day. This tenebrous entrance, after plunging onward some forty feet, fell against a wall of gray light, where the visitor, making an abrupt angle, passed into the purer air of a narrow court. Opposite, the passage took up its interrupted way to a farther court, more spacious, where a dirt-colored maple offered a ragged shelter and a few parched vines gripped the yellow walls. The tiled roofs were shrunk, the ridges warped, the walls cracking and bulging about the distorted windows. Along the roofs the dust and dirt had gradually accumulated and given birth to a few blades of gray-green plants. Nature had slipped in and assimilated the work of man, until the building, yielding to the weight of time and the elements, appeared as a hollow sunk in fantastic cliffs, where, from narrow, misshapen slits, the dwellers peered forth. About the maple swarmed a troop of children, grimy, bare, and voluble. In the branches and in the ivy a horde of sparrows shrilled and fought, keeping warily out of reach of the lank cats that slunk in ambush.

In front of No. 38, each morning, prompt as the sun, which she often anticipated, la Mère Corniche appeared with her broom. She was one of those strange old women in whom the appearances of youth and age are incongruously blended. Seen from behind, her short, erect stature (she was an equal four feet), her skirt stopping half-way below the knees to reveal a pair of man's boots, gave the effect of a child of twelve. When she turned, the shock of the empty gums, the skin hanging in pockets on the cheeks, the eyes showing from their pouches like cold lanterns, caused her to seem like a being who had never known youth.

She had thrown open the doors on this August morning and was conducting a resolute campaign with her broom when she perceived a young man, who even at that early hour, from the evidence of dust, had just completed an arduous journey. A bulging handkerchief swinging from a staff across his shoulder evidently contained all his baggage, and proclaimed the definite purpose of the immigrant. The concierge regarded him with some curiosity. He was too old to be a truant scholar, and too much at ease to be of the far provinces. Besides, his dress showed familiarity with the city modes. He seemed rather the young adventurer running to Paris in the first flush of that enthusiasm and attraction which the Revolution in its influx had awakened.

The dress itself proclaimed, not without a touch of humor, the preparation of the zealous devotee approaching the Mecca of his ambitions. His cocked hat, of a largeness which suggested another owner, was new and worn jauntily, with the gay assurance of youth in its destiny. A brilliant red neck-cloth was arranged with the abandon of pardonable vanity. A clear blue redingote, a cloth-of-gold vest, and a pair of drab knickerbockers completed a costume that had drawn many a smile. For while the coat was so long that the sleeves hid the wrist, the vest was bursting its buttons, and though the knickerbockers pinched, the hat continued to wobble in dumb accusation; so that two generations at least must have contributed to the wardrobe of the young buccaneer.

At the moment the concierge discovered the youthful adventurer, he was engrossed in the task of slapping the dust from his garments, while his eyes, wandering along the streets, were searching to some purpose.

Curiosity being stronger than need, it was la Mère Corniche who put the first question.

"Well, citoyen, you seek some one in this street?"

"The answer should be apparent," the young fellow answered frankly. "I seek a lodging. Have you a room to let?"

"H'm!" La Mère Corniche eyed him unfavorably. "Maybe I have, and maybe I haven't; I take no aristocrats."

The young man, seeing that his clothes were in disfavor, began to laugh.

"In as far, citoyenne," he said, with a sweep of his hand, "as it concerns these, I plead guilty: my clothes are aristocrats. But hear me," as his listener began to scowl. "They were; but aristocrats being traitors, I confiscated them; and," he added slyly, "I come to deliver them to the State."

"And to denounce the traitors, citoyen," the concierge exclaimed fiercely, "even were they your father and mother."

"Even that—if I had a family," he added cautiously. "And now, citoyenne, what can you do for me?"

With this direct question, the fanatic light in her face died away. The little woman withdrew a step and ran her eyes over the prospective tenant. She made him repeat the question, and finally said, with a sigh, as though regretting the price she had fixed in her mind, "How long?"

"A year—two years—indefinitely."

"There are two rooms and a parlor on the second," she began tentatively.

"That suits me."

"The price will be for you—" la Mère Corniche hastened to increase the sum, "thirty francs a month."

"Good."

"Payable in advance."

The young fellow shrugged his shoulders, and with a comical grin turned his pockets inside out.

"What!" la Mère Corniche shrieked in her astonishment. "You swindler! You have taken an apartment at thirty francs a month without a sou in your pocket."

"At present."

"Get off, you, who'd rob a poor old woman."

"We'll renounce the apartment, then," he cried, with a laugh. "One room, citoyenne; give me one room if you are a patriot."

"Patriot—robber! Be off or I'll denounce you!"

The young fellow, seeing his case hopeless, prepared to depart.

"Good-by, then, mother," he said. "And thanks for your patriotic reception. Only direct me to the house of Marat and I'm done with you."

"What have you to do with the Citoyen Marat?" cried the old woman, startled into speech at that name.

"That is my affair."

"You know him?"

"I have a letter to him."

La Mère Corniche looked at him in indecision. An emissary to Marat was a very different matter. She struggled silently between her avarice and the one adoration of her life, until her listener, mistaking her silence, turned impatiently on his heel.

"Here, come back," the concierge cried, thus brought to decision. "Let me see your letter."

The young fellow shrugged his shoulders good-humoredly and produced a large envelope, on which the curious eye of his listener beheld the magic words, "To Jean Paul Marat." But if she had hoped to find on it some clue to its sender, she was disappointed. She turned the letter over and handed it reluctantly back.

"Private business, hey?"

"Particularly private," he said. Then, seeing his advantage and following up his good fortune, he added: "Now, citoyenne, don't you think you could tuck me away somewhere until I make a fortune?"

The old woman hesitated a moment longer, whereupon he fell to scanning pensively the address, and mumbling over "Jean Paul Marat, a great man that."

"Damn, I'll do it!" la Mère Corniche suddenly cried, and with a crook of her thumb she bade him follow her. But immediately she halted and asked:

"Citoyen—?"

"Citoyen Barabant—Eugène Armand Barabant."

"Of—?"

"Of 38 Rue Maugout," he said laconically, then, with a smile, modified his step to follow the painful progress of his guide.

At the dark entrance a raven came hopping to meet them, filling the gloom with his raucous cry. Barabant halted.

"It's only Jean Paul," explained the old woman. "He brings good luck."

She placed him, flapping his wings, on her shoulder and continued. At the first court, by the stairs that led to the vacant apartment on the second floor, she hesitated, but the indecision was momentary. Into the second court Barabant followed with an air of interest that showed that, though perhaps familiar with the streets of Paris, he had never delved into its secret places. Twice more la Mère Corniche halted before possible lodgings, until at last, having vanquished each temptation, she began to clamber up the shaky flights that led to the attic.

Barabant had perceived each mental struggle with great enjoyment. He was young, adventurous, entering life through strange gates. So when at length they reached the end of their climb, and his guide, after much tugging, accompanied by occasional kicks, had forced open the reluctant door, the dingy attic appeared to him a haven of splendor.

La Mère Corniche watched him curiously from the doorway, rubbing her chin. "Eh, Citoyen Barabant? Well, does it suit you?"

"Perfect."

He cast a careless glance at the impoverished room and craned out of the window. In his survey of the court, his eye rested a moment on the window below, where, through the careless folds of a half-curtain, he had caught the gleam of a white arm.

"And what is the price of this?" he asked; but his thoughts were elsewhere.

"Nothing."

La Mère Corniche sighed heroically, and hastened on as though distrusting her generosity. "Only, when you see Citoyen Marat, tell him that I, Citoyenne Corniche, have done this to one who is his friend."

Barabant remained one moment motionless, as though confounded at this remnant of human feeling in the sibyl. But the door had hardly closed when, without a glance at his new quarters, he was again at the window. The truth was that, without hesitating to reflect on the insufficiency of the evidence, he had already built a romance on the sight of a white arm seen two stories below through the folds of a curtain. So when he returned eagerly to his scrutiny, what was his disenchantment to perceive below a very buxom matron, who was regarding him with equal attentiveness.

Barabant, with a laugh at his own discomfiture, began to search more cautiously. And as one deception in youth is sufficient to make a skeptic for an hour, when in turn he began to explore the window opposite he received, with indifference, the view of another arm, though it was equally white and well modeled.

But this time, as though Fate were determined to rebuke him for scorning her gifts, there appeared at the window the figure of a young girl, whose early toilet allowed to be seen a throat and arm of sufficient whiteness to dazzle the young romanticist.

Youth and natural coquetry fortunately are stronger than the indifference of poverty. Had Barabant been fifty the girl would have continued her inspection undisturbed; but perceiving him to be in the twenties, and with a certain air of distinction, she hastily withdrew, covering her throat with an instinctive motion of her hand, and leaving Barabant, forgetful of his first disenchantment, to gallop through the delightful fields of a new romance.

II
A RESCUE FROM ARISTOCRATS

After a moment of vain expectation, Barabant withdrew to the inspection of his new possessions. In one corner stood a bed that bore the marks of many restorations. Each leg was of a different shape, rudely fastened to the main body, which, despite threatening fissures, had still survived by the aid of several hitches of stout rope that encouraged the joints. One pillow and two coverings, one chair and a chest of drawers, that answered to much tugging, completed the installation. The floor was of tiles; the ceiling, responding to the sagging of the roof, bulged and cracked, while in one spot it had even receded so far that a ray of the sun squeezed through and fell in a dusty flight to the floor.

Barabant's survey was completed in an instant. Returning to the bed, he paused doubtfully and cautiously tried its strength with a shake. Then he seated himself and slowly drew up both legs. The bed still remaining intact, he turned over, threw the covers over him, and, worn out with the journey, fell asleep.

It was almost ten when he stirred, and the August sun was pouring through the gabled window. A mouse scampered hurriedly home as he started up; a couple of sparrows, hovering undecidedly on the sill, fluttered off. He sat up, rubbing his eyes with the confusion of one who awakens at an unaccustomed hour, and then sprang to the floor so impetuously that the bed protested with a warning creak. His first movement was to the window, where an eager glance showed the opposite room vacant. More leisurely he turned to a survey of his horizon, where in the distance the roofs, of an equal height, rolled away in high, sloping billows of brown tile dotted with flashes of green or the white fleck of linen. The air was warm, but still alive with the freshness of the morning, inviting him to be out and seeing. He left his bundle carelessly on the chair, brushed his clothes, arranged his neck-cloth by means of a pocket-mirror, preparing himself with solicitude for his appearance in the streets.

He descended the stairs alertly, listening for any sound of his neighbors; but the stairways, as well as the courts, were silent and empty, for at that period all Paris hastened daily to the streets, expectant of great events.

Through the ugly, tortuous streets of the Faubourg St. Antoine Barabant plunged eagerly to the boulevard, where the crowd, circulating slowly, lingered from corner to corner, drifting to every knot of discussion, avaricious for every crumb of rumor. Hawkers of ballads and pamphlets sought to slip their wares into the young fellow's hand with a show of mystery and fear of detection. One whispered his "Midnight Diversions of the Austrian Veto"; another showed him furtively the title, "Capet Exposed by his Valet."

Refusing all these, Barabant halted at every shop-window, before numberless engravings representing the Fall of the Bastille, the Oath in the Tennis-court, and the Section-halls.

The gloomy, disheveled figures of the Marseillais were abroad, stalking melodramatically through the crowds or filling the cafés to thunder out their denunciations of tyrants and aristocrats. Fishwives and washerwomen retailed to all comers the latest alarms.

"The aristocrats are burning the grain-fields!"

"A plot has been unearthed to exterminate the patriots by grinding glass in their flour."

"The Faubourg St. Antoine is to be destroyed by fire."

Venders of relics offered the manacles of the Bastille and the rope-ladder of Latude; fortune-tellers prophesied, for a consideration, the fall of Capet and the advent of the Republic; an exhibitor of trick-dogs advertised a burlesque on the return of the royal family from Versailles. At a marionette theater the dolls represented public personages, and the king and the queen (Veto and the Austrian) were battered and humiliated to the applause of the crowds.

At points on Barabant's progress he listened to young fellows from tables or chairs reading to the illiterate from the newspapers, quoting from witty Camille Desmoulins or sullen, headlong Marat. Barabant was amazed at the response from the audience, at their sudden movements to laughter or anger. Swayed by the infection, his lips moved involuntarily with a hundred impetuous thoughts. In this era that promised so much to youth, which demanded its ardor, its enthusiasm, and its faith, he longed to emerge from obscurity. For youth is the period of large resolutions, ardent convictions, and the championship of desperate causes. In that season, when the world is new, the mind, fascinated by its unfolding strength, leaps over decisions, doubts nothing, nor hesitates. In revolutions it is the generation that dares that leads.

From the young and daring Faubourg St. Antoine Barabant emerged, inspired, elated, and meditative. Barabant, disciple of the Revolution of Ideas, was bewildered by the might of this torrent. It excited his vision, but it terrified him. It was immense, but it might erupt through a dozen forced openings.

In the Rue St. Honoré, where the discussions grew more abstract, he was startled at the contrast. Great events were struggling to the surface, yet here in the cafés men discussed charmingly on theory and principle; nor could he fancy, fresh from the vigor of the people, the sacred Revolution among these gay colors, immaculate wigs, and well-fed and thirsty orators.

But this first impression, acute with the shock of contrast, was soon succeeded by a feeling of stimulation. Attracted, as is natural in youth, by the beautiful and the luxurious, and led by his imagination and his ambition, he forgot his emotions. Whereas in the mob he had felt himself equal to the martyr, he now breathed an air that aroused his powers. They discussed the freedom of the individual, the liberty of the press, and the abolishment of the penalty of death, with grace and with unfailing, agile wit, and debated the Republic with the airs of the court.

Barabant, who wished to see everything at once, made a rapid excursion to the Tuileries, to the Place de la Grève, the Place de la Revolution, the Markets, and the famous Hall of the Jacobins.

Toward evening, as the dusk invaded the streets, and the lanterns, from their brackets on the walls, set up their empire over the fleeting day, an indefinable melancholy descended over him: the melancholy of the city that affects the young and the stranger. Barabant's spirits, quick to soar, momentarily succumbed to that feeling of loneliness and aloofness that attacks the individual in the solitudes of nature and in that wilderness of men, the city.

He was leaning against a pillar in the Rue St. Honoré, in this ruminative mood watching the unfamiliar crowd, when his glance was stopped by the figure of a flower-girl. She was tall, dark, and lithe, and, though without any particular charm of form, she had such an unusual grace in her movements that he fell curiously to speculating on her face. But the turning proving a disappointment, he laughed at his haste, and his glance wandered elsewhere.

"Citoyen, buy my cockade?"

Barabant turned quickly; the flower-girl was at his side, smiling mischievously up at him. He was conscious of a sudden embarrassment—a solicitude for his bearing before the frank amusement of the girl. This time he did not turn away so carelessly. The face was attractive despite its irregularity, full of force in the free span of the forehead and of sudden passions in the high, starting eyebrows. The eyes alone seemed cold and sardonic, without emotion or change.

"Come, citoyen, a cockade."

Barabant shrugged his shoulders, and diving into his purse, at length produced a few coppers.

"A patriot's dinner is more my need, citoyenne, than a cockade."

The girl, who had been watching with amusement this search after the elusive coins, ignoring his answer, asked curiously:

"From the provinces?"

Barabant, resenting the patronizing tone, said stiffly:

"No."

"But not quite Parisian," the flower-girl returned, with a smile, and her glance traveled inquiringly over the incongruous make-up.

Barabant laughed. "Parisian by a day only."

The girl smiled again, and, suddenly fastening a cockade on his lapel, said: "You are a good-looking chap; keep your sous; when your purse is fuller, remember me." And thrusting back his proffered money, she took up her basket and nodded gaily to him. "Good luck to you, citoyen. Vive la jeunesse!"

The accidental meeting quite restored him to his eager zest again. The one greeting converted the wilderness into a familiar land. He started on his walk, seeking a humble bill of fare within the range of his modest resources. He chose one where the dinner consisted of a thick soup the filling qualities of which he knew—a purée of beans and a piece of cheese. It was still somewhat earlier than the dinner-hour, and he finished his meal silently watched by the waiter with suspicious eyes. Thence he wandered through brighter streets, pausing at times on the skirts of the crowd that invaded the cafés, which now began to grow noisy with impromptu oratory.

The Palais Royal with its flaring halls drew him to its tumultuous life. He wandered through the gambling-rooms, through fakers' exhibitions, heedless of siren voices, watching the play of pickpockets and dupes, until suddenly in the crowd a figure of unusual oddity caught his attention: a tall, military man with a cocked hat, shifted very much over one ear, and a nose thrown back so far that it seemed to be scouting in the air, fearful lest its owner should miss a single rumor.

Without purpose in his wanderings, Barabant unconsciously fell to following this new character. The body was lank, the legs long,—out of all proportion, and so thin that they seemed rather a pair of pliable stilts,—while the arms hung or moved in loose jerks as though dependent from the joints of a manikin.

Oblivious to the banter and the scrutiny of the throng, the wanderer pursued his inquisitive way. From time to time he stopped, craning his neck and remaining absorbed in the contemplation of a chance display of tricolor or a group of shrill orators sounding their eloquence to the eager mass. The inspection ended, a guttural exclamation or a whistle escaping the lips showed that the impression had been registered behind the keen, laughing countenance. Gradually the crowd, inclined at first to jeer, perceiving him utterly unconscious of their interest, turned to banter; but there too they were met with the utmost complacency.

"Hey, Daddy Long-legs!"

"Beware you keep out of their reach, my friend."

"Citizen Scissors!"

"Citizen Stilts!"

"Citizen Pique la bise!"

At this last allusion to the manner in which his nose might be said to cut the breeze, he opened wide a gaping mouth and roared "Touché!" so heartily that the crowd, who never laugh long at those who laugh with them, returned to their occupation with grunts of approval. Still there remained to be revealed the complexion of his political belief: whether it was a patriot that thus paraded the steadfast Palais Royal, or a hireling of a tyrant aristocracy.

Here again the visitor puzzled all conjectures. Arrived opposite the café, "To the Fall of the Bastille," his glance no sooner seized the inscription than he snatched off his hat with so hearty a "Bravo!" that his neighbors echoed the infectious acclamation; but at the very next turn, perceiving a mountebank's counter presided over by a pretty citizeness, he paused and repeated the salute with equal vigor. Now, though the tribute to a pretty face could not justly distinguish the parties, yet the inspiration and the manner had the taint of aristocracy. So that those who had listened looked dubious, then scratched their heads, and finally retired, laughing over their own mystification.

With a gluttonous chuckle the stranger turned suddenly into a neighboring passage. Barabant followed, in time to see the lean figure mount a chance staircase, ascending which on the humor of the moment, he emerged in turn into a café of unusual magnificence.

Having no money with which to pay a consommation at the tables, Barabant remained among the spectators. The tall stranger had joined a group in the middle of the room, whence a florid Chevalier de St. Louis cried bombastically:

"Citizen Bottle-opener, send me the Citizen Table-wiper!"

"And bring the Citizen Broom," took up another, "to expel this Citizen Dog!"

"Let the Citizen Crier," added another, with careless scorn, "call the Citizen My Carriage!"

Amid this persiflage Barabant remained, chafing and angry, realizing that he had stumbled into that abomination of patriots, a den of aristocrats.

The purport of all table-to-table addresses was the incompetency of the National Assembly and the state of anarchy existing since the royal power had been defied. Although the café was not accessible to the mob, and was evidently of a certain clientèle, there was a smattering of unaccustomed guests, who manifested their disapproval of these remarks by grumbling and even threats.

Barabant at length, losing control of his temper, sprang upon a chair.

"A government," he cried—"yes, a government is what we need. Let us be frank: the present condition of affairs is an anomaly. It cannot exist. The Revolution is to-day a farce."

"Anarchy!" "Chaos!" "Bravo!" "Continue!"

"And why?" he went on. "Because it has not gone far enough. Either king or revolution: the two cannot exist. What we need is the Republic, the Republic, the Republic!"

The words fell on the room like offal thrown in the midst of ravenous wolves. A hideous upheaval, a hoarse shout, a multitude of scrambling forms, and the listeners who had mistaken the drift of his first words rose in fury. Some one pulled the table from under him. There were shouts and blows, a confusion of bodies before his eyes, and babel let loose. In the midst of it he felt himself suddenly enveloped in a pair of wiry arms and dragged through the mêlée. He struggled, but the grip that held him was not to be shaken. Leaving behind the shouting, they passed out into the turning of a corridor, then through another into quiet and a garden. There his captor, setting him on his feet, drew back with a smile. Barabant, glancing up, beheld the lank military figure of an hour before, with his nose tipped in the air in impudent enjoyment.

"Well, my knight-errant," he said quizzically, "the next time you preach the Republic, select a Sans-Culotte audience and not a Royalist café, or there may not be a Dossonville to rescue you."

Barabant smoothed out his clothes, crestfallen, but resumed his dignity.

"From the country!" his rescuer continued, and the amusement gave place to one of reflectiveness. "Dame! are they already crying for the Republic outside of Paris?"

"They are. That is," Barabant added, "the masses are done with the king. The Girondins are not so radical."

"H'm!" Dossonville said for all answer. He stood silent a moment, wrapped in his own thoughts, before he again questioned him: "And the Revolution: do you hear such opinions as you heard to-night in the provinces? Is there no sign of a reaction?"

"No; everything is for more radical measures."

With this answer, Dossonville seemed to dismiss the matter from his mind. He looked him over again, and a twinkle showing in his eyes, he asked:

"More enthusiasm than friends, hey?"

Barabant laughed. "True."

"And what are you counting upon doing?"

Barabant remained silent.

"Good—discretion!"

Barabant, determined to shift the inquiry, demanded point-blank:

"What were you doing in a café of aristocrats?"

"What were you?" Dossonville retorted. "There are many ways to serve the Revolution besides proclaiming it from the tops of tables. Leave me my ways. Do you think if I were an aristocrat I'd have taken the pains to save you? Come, young man, don't turn your back on opportunities. Swallow your pride and confess that there are not many more meals in sight."

"I am but a day in Paris," Barabant answered; and then, lest he should seem to have relented: "there are a hundred ways to find a living."

"Can you write? Have you written pamphlets?" Dossonville persisted. "What would you say to a chance to see that fine eloquence caught in black and white and circulating in the streets?"

Barabant's face flushed with such a sudden delight that the other laughingly drew his arm into his and exclaimed:

"Come, I see how it is. Camille Desmoulins is only twenty-nine. It is the age for the youngsters. Only—" He stopped suddenly. "There are many degrees of Republicans nowadays. Does your eloquence run in the line of our valiant radical Marat, or Danton and Desmoulins, or are we of the school of Condorcet and Roland?"

"I am Girondin," Barabant answered.

"Good." He reflected a moment. "Just the place!"

He started on, and then suddenly stopped, as by habit of caution. "No, not to-night. Where do you live?"

"Eugène Barabant, Rue Maugout, No. 38." He drew out two letters. "I have a word of introduction to Roland."

"And the other?"

"To Marat."

"Ah, Marat," Dossonville said, with a sudden cooling. "A strong man that, and very patriotic."

"I do not intend to present it," Barabant said, seeing the change. He hesitated a moment, as though to reveal a confidence, while a smile struggled to his lips. But in the end, resisting the desire, he said evasively, "It is a measure of protection, in case of danger."

Dossonville scrutinized him sharply, and then, as though reassured by the frank visage, he said: "Very well; I'll be around to-morrow night. Try your hand at a polemic or two. Have you a knack of poetry? Satires are more powerful than arguments. A laugh can trip up a colossus."

"I have done a little verse."

"Who hasn't?" He paused. "You will be discreet? Au revoir!"

He turned on his heel, but immediately returned.

"I forgot. One word of advice."

"Well?"

"Revolutions strike only among the steeples. Take my advice: renounce publicity and remain obscure."

"But I had rather die in this age than live through another."

"Well, my duty's done," Dossonville answered, shrugging his shoulders. Then repeating to himself Barabant's last response, he added, "That sounds well; food for the mob; put it down."

And without more ado, he left him as delighted as though he had just been elected to the National Convention.

III
CITOYENNE NICOLE

Toward six o'clock the next morning, when la Mère Corniche and her broom alone were stirring, there appeared at a gabled window that broke through the crust of the roofs, the figure of a young girl, who, after a glance down at the quiet courtyard and the windows void of life, remained to give the final touches to a scattering of golden hair.

The air was still young, and in the skies the multifarious tints of the dawn had not quite faded as the burly sun bobbed up among the distant chimney-tops. She ensconced herself in the window, running her hands with indolent movements through the meshes as though reluctant to leave the flash and play of the sun amid its lusters. She was young and pretty, and she knew it, and, with a frank enjoyment, she let the long locks slip through her fingers or brought them caressingly against her cheek.

Though from her figure she could not have been more than eighteen, yet in the poise of her head and in the subtile smile, full of grace and piquancy, there showed the coquetry of the woman who plans to please the masculine eye.

Suddenly she sprang back, leaving the window vacant. A moment later there emerged opposite the thoughtful face of Barabant. Unaware of her proximity, he swept the courtyard with an indifferent look, and drawing from his pocket the three sous that alone remained to him, he fell into a deep meditation.

Presently the sprightly eyes and mischievous profile of the girl returned, cautiously, as though awaiting a challenge. Then, as in the abstraction of his mood he continued to be oblivious to her presence, she advanced to fuller view.

Gradually her curiosity became excited by an evident conflict in his moods. At one moment he pulled a long, somber face, and at the next he lapsed into laughter. As human nature cannot endure in silence the spectacle of someone laughing to himself, the girl, unable longer to restrain her interest, called to him with that melody which is natural to the voice of a maiden:

"Well, citoyen, are you going to laugh or cry?"

At her banter, Barabant started up so suddenly that one of the sous which he had been regarding meditatively slipped from his fingers, bounded on the roof, rolled along the gutter, and disappeared in the water-hole.

"Diable! there goes my dinner!"

"How so?" the girl said, repressing her laugh at his long face.

"I had three; one for lunch, one for dinner, and one for some purchases I intend to make."

"Dame! citoyen, three are not many sous."

Barabant drew himself up proudly. "Plenty, after to-night."

"When your banker returns?"

"Exactly."

"And I have made you lose your dinner: a bad beginning for neighbors, Citoyen—?"

"Citoyen Eugène Barabant. Citoyenne—?"

"Nicole."

"Nicole—?"

"Heavens, isn't Nicole enough? One name is all we need; besides, it would take me too long to find out the other."

As she said this, she smiled so unaffectedly that Barabant, forgetting the pangs of hunger, looked on admiringly.

"You are a philosopher, Nicole. And what do you do—if it is not indiscreet to ask?"

She understood perfectly the hesitancy, but laughed without a trace of disconcertion.

"Oh, I work hard; I am a bouquetière. Which reminds me, I must be off to the flower-market."

However, she lingered a moment. "And you, citoyen?"

"Traveler," Barabant said, with a superb wave of his hand, and then exploded in laughter at the thought. "Citoyenne, tell me something."

"Speak."

"Have you ever fasted a day?"

"Hundreds of times."

"If you have but one meal in sight, when is the best time to take it?"

"In the middle of the day; something may happen before dinner."

Barabant made a wry face.

"Seriously, how much have you?"

He held up the two sous.

"Two sous, and you speak of buying a meal,—a crumb of bread!"

"Perhaps," Barabant admitted, "meal is an exaggeration."

"Come, you are a good fellow," Nicole said, nodding approvingly. "You have the right spirit. I have made you lose one dinner; it is only right that I should make reparation. Will you lunch with me?"

To her amusement, he drew up proudly at the thought of accepting a favor from her. She smiled at this show of pride, liking it, but trusting in the bloom and charm of her youth to defeat it. She did not trust in vain. After a brief conflict which showed clearly the weak surrender, he ended by smiling in turn.

"Only," he cried, "I accept it as a loan."

"Heavens! but I didn't intend to pay, myself," she protested, well pleased with her victory. "If you think dinners are to be had only for pay you are not a Parisian yet."

"In that case, I accept."

"Meet me, then, at eleven o'clock, Place de la République, Citoyen Barabant."

"I shall be there an hour ahead!"

At the door of the next room she called, "Louison!" drumming quietly with her fingers. Receiving no answer, she entered. The bed was vacant, undisturbed. Without surprise, and with even a certain satisfaction at being freed from the company of her friend, she passed down and out into the streets on her way to the Marché des Fleurs.

As she went, with many an energetic toss of her head interspersed with pensive smiles, she turned over in her mind the impressions of her first encounter, with the confidence of the woman who at the first exchange of glances feels her power. He had shown his admiration without timidity, which would have been vexatious, or forwardness, which would have been unendurable. She liked his show of pride, and more that he had yielded before the temptation of her eyes. That tribute sent her straying into the thousand and one pleasurable paths with which her ardent imagination filled the future.

At the flower-markets her preoccupation was so evident that she was compelled to run the fire of banter. She bore the ordeal with equanimity, hurrying away with buoyant step and eyes alert, impatient for the morning to pass.

She passed along the boulevards, disposing of her cockades among regular customers, until at length she arrived at her destination, the Café Procopé. There, mounted on a chair, a short, roly-poly ragamuffin, with bloated, pouter cheeks and squinting, almond eyes, was reading the morning bulletins in such thunderous tones that one readily divined the crier of carriages, whose voice had been trained in the battle of street sounds.

Among those assembled at the tables, she directed her way to where a gruff, gaunt man, sunk in a capacious redingote, was heralding her approach with a look of welcome.

"Good morning, Papa Goursac," she said, slipping into a waiting seat. "Here's your cockade,—the best, as usual!"

"There, take your drink," he answered, showing her the glass. He roused himself from his attitude of whimsical inspection, turning to her a look that belied the stern voice. "Well, and what luck to-day?"

"The best," she said, showing him her lightly laden basket.

"Of course you did not notice the new lodger," said Goursac, scornfully. His bushy eyebrows and looming beak seemed so grim that Nicole with difficulty suppressed a laugh.

"Indeed," she said, pretending ignorance to plague him, "is there a new lodger?"

"Yes, but he's a doctor, old as I am, so he'll not interest you."

"What a bad humor you are in," she said, enjoying his wrath. "As though you did not interest me!"

"You know what I mean."

Aware of his suspicious scrutiny, she continued. "What a pity! Why couldn't he have been a young fellow? Ah, mon Dieu, what time is it?"

"Why do you want to know?" growled Goursac. "Whom are you going to meet?"

"The old doctor, of course," she answered, laughing as she escaped.

As she passed in front, the ragamuffin was still roaring the news.

"Heavens, Jambony," she cried, "there is no need to let the foreigners know what is taking place!"

"Citoyenne, you exaggerate," the carriage-crier answered; "I am only whispering."

"Then, my dear Jambony, just think your thoughts. I am sure they will be loud enough!"

In great good humor, she began to work her way in the direction of the wrecked Bastille, and perhaps from the very elevation of her spirits, good luck quickly emptied her basket. Thus freed, she lapsed into the spectator, flattening her nose against the shop-windows or drifting lazily from knot to knot of discussion.

All at once, when she was wandering from the thoroughfares among a tangle of silent, murky alleys, a child's scream brought her to an attentive halt. The cries redoubled. Without a thought of personal danger, she plunged recklessly down the alley in the direction of the appeals. Under the bulging shadow of a balcony a girl was struggling in the clutches of a mountebank, while, from a box on the ground, a monkey was adding its shrill chatter to the broil.

At Nicole's charge the man released the girl with an oath and sprang back against the wall. At the sight of the shriveled-parchment face and the familiar leer Nicole burst out, in astonishment:

"Ah, Cramoisin, I might have known it was you!" She replaced in her belt the knife she had drawn, facing him with the whips of her scorn.

"Women are too strong for you, then! You must match your strength with children. Bravo! my brave fellow, you are the victor at last. Wait until I sing your praises. You shall become famous, tamer of children!"

"Vixen!" shrieked the mountebank, stung to words by her gadding. He shook a lean fist at her, crying, "Thy turn'll come!"

"And I who thought you were pining away for love of me!" she continued mercilessly. "Fickle Cramoisin! There, be off, be off, do you hear, or I shall be tempted to chastise you!"

Cramoisin, not disdaining the offer of retreat, slung his mountebank's box on his back and scurried off, the ape on his shoulder chattering back at them with communicated fear.

Nicole turned. A slip of a girl, half child, half savage, was regarding her from round, wolfish eyes, shrinking against the wall. "There, there, ma petite," she said, "there is nothing to cry about. That Cramoisin is as weak as a leaf; you could have pushed him over with a finger. And your knife?"

The girl, still sobbing, shook her head.

"Heavens! child, you are not fit to be abroad. There, stop crying, I tell you. I do not like to hear it." But perceiving that the girl was thoroughly unnerved, she abandoned her note of command, and, enveloping her with her arm, said gently: "Come, mon enfant, I promise you there is nothing more to fear. Cramoisin is as much afraid of me as the fat Louis of the Citoyen Marat. I'll take you under my protection. You are nothing but a child; no wonder the brute has frightened you. Come, what's your name?"

"Geneviève."

"How old?"

"Fifteen."

"But that is almost a woman! Why, I am but eighteen. One must be gay, that is all, and have a bit of a temper."

Seeing that the girl was recovering, she continued for a while her light tone. "And where do you live?"

"38 Rue Maugout."

"Impossible! Since when?"

"Two months."

"How curious! And I have never noticed you."

"I am not very big."

"Bah, you are big enough and old enough, only you need some hints. See there!" With a deft hand she drew in the dress over the hips and loosened it at the throat. "You have really a good figure, but you don't know it. You must be coquette before you can be a woman. In future I'll keep an eye on you. Where do you sleep?"

"In the cellar."

"I thought so. Sleep with me to-night, then; there's room enough. All right now? I must be going."

Geneviève caught her hand and covered it with kisses.

"There, kiss my cheek," Nicole said, affected by her display of gratitude. "What a baby! You shall stay with me. Until to-night, then."

All at once she remembered her engagement, and on the moment, forgetting the new partnership so lightly contracted, she hurried away, with such good will that she arrived exactly on time. As this was not to her liking, she screened herself in the crowd, seeking Barabant. She found him soon, approaching, still immersed in his projected article and betraying his preoccupation by such scowls and sudden gestures that the passers-by would have taken him for demented had not the spectacle been one familiar to their eyes.

"Ah, mon Dieu!" Nicole said to herself, "I thought I'd found a man, and he turns out a philosopher. Also, he does not seem very much occupied in looking for me!"

She stepped forward to meet him, saying mischievously: "Well, have you settled the affairs of the nation? What furor on an empty stomach, Citoyen Eugène!"

Barabant returned to earth quickly, not a little ashamed at the flights of his imagination, and his laugh betrayed his discomfiture as he said:

"It helps one to forget the vacancy."

Nicole leading the way, they hurried through the thronged streets, scenting at every step the inviting odor of soups and stews, until they arrived at a large tavern, or brasserie, around which was a thick crowd struggling for admission.

"Have you heard of Santerre?" Nicole said. "A very wise man who has discovered that the seat of popularity lies in the stomach."

"The Romans placed all the affections there."

"Ah, you've had an education," Nicole said, with a new respect. "There's Santerre."

Before the entrance a huge mass of a man, boisterous in his hospitality and his laughter, was distributing enormous hand-shakes.

Nicole saluted him with evident familiarity.

"I have brought you a patriot to dinner, citoyen!"

Santerre winced a bit and grumbled:

"Eh, Nicole, and you have brought yourself along."

"Vive Santerre!" the girl cried, with a laugh. "Citoyen Barabant has just arrived, and the first thing he asked was to see the famous leader of the Faubourg St. Antoine."

"At lunch-time, of course," said Santerre, with a shrug. "Pass in and eat."

Nicole seized Barabant by the hand and entered the restaurant, already crowded with the self-invited guests of the leader's ready hospitality. They found a corner table and settled down to a quiet inspection of the noisy room.

Masons, carters, and laborers preponderated, while a smattering of young lawyers and journalists circulated from table to table, with ready hand-shakes, to take up the conversation or clink a glass in toasts to the dozen subjects most in favor. Above the din of plates and cutlery, cutting the hum of voices, the toasts emerged sharply.

"To the Bonnets Rouges!"

"To the good Sans-Culottes!"

"À bas les Tyrans!"

"Vive la Constitution!"

"Vive Santerre!"

"Long life to our host!"

At times the Carmagnole, at times some popular ballad of the day, would start from a corner, and gathering headway, would gradually run through the noise of the room until, absorbing all other sounds, it ended in a gale. Whereupon there would be a clatter of knives and glass, shouts of "Bravo!" laughter, and more drinking.

Barabant was too susceptible a nature not to respond to the magnetism of such surroundings. His look regained all its ardor of the morning, until Nicole regarded him with a new interest. He had the long, narrow forehead of the period, marked with thoughtfulness and curiosity. The nose was high-bridged, the nostrils were sensitive and dilating with emotion. The gray eyes were shrewd, kind, gay, and noting, with the mobility and charm of the enthusiast, but, in their repose, without that impress of authority and earnestness of purpose which give to the man of imagination the genius of leadership.

"Come, citoyen," Nicole said, at the end of her inspection, "tell me something about yourself. I am filled with curiosity."

"Ma foi, Nicole," Barabant answered, "it's not much. I was at Fontainebleau; I'm now in Paris. I had an uncle who disapproved of my ideas; he showed me the door, I declared his goods confiscate, and here I am, not a bit depressed,—with but one debt," he added as an afterthought.

"Debts are aristocratic; renounce them."

"The trouble is, I can't rid myself of the creditor, though I pay him over and over."

Nicole raised her glance in surprise, but Barabant added, smiling, "It is my stomach, and a persistent creditor he is."

Nicole laughed gaily. "There, touch hands," she cried. "You are the philosopher." Persisting in her inquiry, she continued encouragingly: "You have a father?"

Barabant smiled. "And a mother, too. And now no more questions, Nicole, for I shall refuse them."

She drew back with a little movement of pique, but yielding to her natural moods, she lifted her eyebrows and, with her charming smile, said with frankness:

"Ah, you are legitimate, then. I have only a mother; that is to say, I had. She is dead now. I don't remember her. God rest her soul."

A little movement of superstition passed over her face and she crossed herself. "My father was a sergeant of the line, so they tell me." She threw out the palms of her hands. "Who knows? It might as well be a rag-picker, or a prince, for all the good it does me."

"Diable!" Barabant exclaimed, regarding her more closely. "You don't seem to be cast down."

"Oh, no; it's only this year I've been by myself. I was brought up by my aunt—Aunt Berthe. What a woman!" She shook her head grimly. "When I came in late she beat me,—oh, but solidly, firmly." She grimaced and, with the instinct of acting that is of the people, drew her hand across her shoulder, as though still smarting under the sting. "And do you know how it ended?"

"Well, how?"

"It ended by my taking the cane from her one night and laying it over her. Oh, such a beating! I was striking for old scores. Aïe! aïe! After that, you understand, I couldn't return."

"I understand."

"So I took a room next to Louison."

Barabant raised his eyebrows in question.

"Louison? She's a comrade. You will see her." She stopped. "We are good friends, only I—well—I don't know." Nicole, who conversed abundantly with her shoulders, raised them again. "When you're rich you can choose; but with us, we take what's nearest. We must have some one to gossip with, to weep with, to laugh with, to confide a little in, and so we take what we can get. That's how it is." Suddenly she halted suspiciously. "Are you a patriot?" she asked point-blank.

"You'd have thought so last night." Barabant, remembering the drubbing he had escaped the night before, grinned and nodded. At his description of the café Nicole showed great interest.

"You said that, and escaped with your life from that den of aristocrats!" she exclaimed, in horror, for she had the popular idea that aristocrats were ogres and inhuman monsters. At the first words descriptive of his rescue she cried:

"Dossonville; beyond a doubt, Dossonville!"

"What, do you know him?" said Barabant. "Who and what is he?"

"Now you have asked me a question. What is Dossonville?" Suddenly she became serious. "He is a mystery to me and to more than me. Frankly, I do not know his party, and don't believe any one else does. He is here and there, with the patriots one moment and the court the next; but whether he is acting for one side or for neither, no one knows. And he rescued you!" She meditated a moment. "That sounds like a patriot; but then, what was he doing in such a place?"

The crowd became more boisterous as the wine-jugs grew lighter; seeing which, Nicole rose and made a sign to him to follow. In the front room she stopped before a vat on which, his huge body astride, Santerre was bandying jests with the crowd. Nicole, approaching, whispered:

"Is it for to-night?"

The brewer affected not to understand her.

"Look here, my big fellow," she said, with the familiarity of the day, "do you want me to cry it from the housetops? Will you understand me now?"

"I don't know when it is to be, or if it will ever be." He sank his voice. "The leaders are wavering; only the tocsin can tell."

"We assemble by sections?"

Santerre nodded.

Nicole, only half satisfied, turned away.

Barabant, who had overheard enough to form a conjecture, kept his counsel; but Nicole, approving his discretion, imparted the information.

"They say we are to storm the Tuileries. But every one hangs back. They are in a panic at the last moment."

"Why, it is folly; think of the National Guard!" Barabant exclaimed.

"I see well you have just arrived. The National Guard, indeed! We are the National Guard. It is only the Swiss we have to fear."

They had gained the right bank of the Seine, and paused from time to time to watch the water-carriers filling their casks in the river, and the loiterers angling sleepily in the shadow of the boats.

Barabant, despite the fires of patriotic fervor, had for some time forgotten his mission in the contemplation of the fresh cheeks and the free carriage of his companion, more and more beguiled from his task of righting the wrongs of the nation by this gipsy of the streets who traversed the rough paths of fortune with such perfect bonhomie.

Nicole, happening to look up, met an unmistakable fixture of gaze, and divined the workings of his mind. She withdrew slightly and said reprovingly: "Not too fast, Citoyen Barabant; we are not in the provinces."

Barabant defended himself.

"My dear Nicole, I have committed no offense. I have done nothing but wish. Judge my acts; my thoughts are not offenses."

"You are not slow at an answer, citoyen," said Nicole, amused. "There, take my hand if you wish. Only, not too fast."

He took her hand, and together they went joyfully through Paris, laughing like two children of the people.

"Barabant, I like you," she said from time to time. "You are a good fellow." Once she added naïvely, "You know, all the same, it is lonely at times." Then, with a laugh, "Allons, comrade!"

She led him through the boulevards, pointing out celebrities at every step, showing him the cafés, Feuillantes or Jacobin. They were constantly halted by the sudden assembly of a crowd to listen to some singer perched on a chair above their shoulders, intoning his ballads.

Presently Nicole said: "Barabant, do you not feel something in the atmosphere—something extraordinary?"

He sharpened his wits and gradually began to distinguish currents in the crowd, and it seemed to him that there was some subtle communication by furtive glances of inquiry and nods of intelligence.

"I believe it will be for to-night," she whispered.

He felt in her hand something nervous and exalted.

"Were you at the taking of the Bastille?" he asked.

"Yes. Wait till you see the women of Paris!" Her eyes grew large as they lost themselves in recollection. Then suddenly she added: "But you haven't seen the gardens of the Palais Royal, and the tree of the green cockades from which Desmoulins called us to arms!"

Leading him into the historic garden, she showed him the chestnut-tree surrounded by a crowd of curious seekers, many of whom snatched up the leaves for mementos.

Everywhere were swarms of children, shrieking high, shrill notes, running and leaping, dodging in and out of the most sedate groups, and stopping occasionally to mimic the swollen front and bombastic arm of the hundred and one orators about whom swirled a hundred and one eddies. Newsboys, racing ahead of their competitors, cried hoarsely the latest bulletins; while in their wake improvised orators mounted on tables and announced the news amid a gale of comments. Through the throng a score of flower-girls twisted their way, calling their patriotic cockades, nodding familiarly to Nicole, who from all sides received salutations of deputies and orators.

"You are well known," said Barabant, surprised at the range of her acquaintance.

"Pardi, I should hope so," she answered, with a proud toss of her head. "Bouquetières are useful. We go everywhere, see everything. We are the scouts of the Republic. I have influence, Barabant; I'll push you ahead," she added, with a determined nod. "Can you speak from the tribune?"

"I have done so."

"Good. You must go to the club. Speak out. Do not be afraid. I adore fire and spirit!" She looked at him critically. "You have the eyes and the lips of the orator. Yes, I'm sure you can speak."

Barabant thrilled at the inspiration in her eyes, and some of the fierce, exulting spirit, the unconquerable gaiety and daring of this gamine, passed swiftly into his soul. Filled with the bombastic daring and sublime confidence of the patriot, he cried: "Give me the chance; give but the chance! They shall hear me—and listen!"

Nicole had a wild impulse to embrace him, but, restraining her enthusiasm, she contented herself with passing from his hand to his arm.

"How old are you?" she asked all at once.

"I am twenty-four," Barabant said, with importance.

"Why, you are a child."

"Camille Desmoulins is not thirty."

"True."

"And what is six years?"

"I hadn't thought of it," admitted Nicole. "I am eighteen; but in Paris at eighteen there is not much unlearned. Allons, les enfants." She drew up to his side, hanging a little on his arm. "Barabant, you are a lucky fellow," she said mischievously.

Barabant, who perfectly understood her allusion to mean lucky in meeting her, drew her closer as they elbowed their way out of the throng. He bent his head to scrutinize her, while Nicole not too consciously accepted the gaze, confident in herself: she was young and she was a Parisian. Her features were rather saucy than regular; her figure, though full and graceful, was perhaps too perfect for eighteen, when a certain slenderness is a future guaranty. But the eyes of the young man do not look into the future. Barabant saw only—giving color to her cheeks, a glow to the eye, and a spring to the foot—that bloom which is of youth and which speaks of eagerness and impatience to embrace life.

Suddenly Nicole, seeking an interruption to this scrutiny, which, though delightful, had become embarrassing, exclaimed, "There's Louison now." She made a movement as though to free her arm, immediately checking it.

Barabant, looking up, beheld the high eyebrows, the starting eyes, and the curious, thin smile of the flower-girl who had spoken to him the night before.

She sent Nicole a greeting from her fingertips, and then perceiving Barabant, she accosted him with a smile of tolerant amusement.

"Why, it's my little man from the country!" Nodding, she passed, with the exclamation, "Bien vrai, you don't lose any time!"

"What, you have already met her?" Nicole exclaimed, disengaging her arm, suddenly quieted and sobered.

"In the Rue St. Honoré, last night."

A frown, swift as a thunderbolt, passed over Nicole's forehead. She stopped, extended her hand, and said curtly, "I must go; good day."

Barabant looked at her in dismay.

"What has happened? What have I done?"

She shook her head, and without further explanation disappeared.

IV
BREWINGS OF THE STORM

When Barabant had groped his way up the tortuous ascent, he was surprised to find his door open, sending a feeble glow over the remainder of his journey. He crossed the threshold on tiptoe, and, to his amazement, beheld a man, in the uniform of the National Guard, stretched out upon his bed, and two lank legs that, over-lapping, were perched on the footboards. He came forward, advanced another step, and recognized Dossonville.

Barabant, believing him to be shamming, went softly to the farther corner and installed himself to wait. But the steady, tranquil breathing of the sleeper soon convinced him. With a sudden inspiration, he stole to the threshold, grasping the handle of the door. The next moment there thundered upon the slumberer the cry:

"Arrest him! The aristocrat!"

As though propelled from a catapult, the lank form in one bound shot over the end of the bed, threw two chairs in front of him as a rampart, snatched out his sword, and beheld, in this bellicose posture, no horrid band of Jacobins, but the lithe figure of Barabant, laughing silently, with folded arms.

"Tonnerre de Dieu! Why did you do that?"

Dossonville returned the sword to the scabbard, pushed aside the rampart, and extended his hand, saying, "I was asleep; serves me right; but you have a rude manner of jesting."

"I did not suspect your conscience was so uneasy," Barabant said, retaining the quizzical smile.

"Oho!"

With his lips in this startled oval, Dossonville halted. His eyes contracted into slits as he said dryly, "So that was a ruse."

"If you like."

"Hello! it was well conceived. Tiens, tiens, tiens!" His eyes continued their scrutiny. "I have, perhaps, not done justice to your acumen. My compliments and my excuses."

He swung his bonnet in a long, awkward, trailing swoop across his feet. Barabant executed a bow of equal assurance.

Dossonville returned to uprightness with a snap of his heels, and a certain asperity rang in the next question.

"And why did you deem the experiment necessary?"

"Before intrusting my safety I prefer to reassure myself."

"You saw that at the cry of 'aristocrats' I sprang to my guard."

"I said 'the aristocrat.'"

"I understood, 'Arrest him, aristocrats!'"

The two men, Dossonville cool, Barabant amused, measured looks, until, dismissing the subject with a motion of his arm, Dossonville seated himself.

"Well, what do they say of me?"

Barabant, who did not intend to surrender his vantage, straddled his chair, rested his arms on the back, and, looking him magisterially in countenance, answered:

"Citoyen Dossonville, you seem to be a mystery. No one knows where to place you. You consort with patriots and traitors alike."

Dossonville, facing this accusation, appeared to reflect a moment.

"That's true. I do not hide it—from patriots." His voice gave a meaning inflection to the ending; then he added, irritably: "There are more ways than one of serving the nation. I repeat, leave me mine." He broke off. "Have you written anything? Give it to me."

Barabant extended the precious manuscript. He took it, but before spreading it upon his knee, he said: "After all, you are right. I have a way to convince you. You shall see. But first for this."

He began to read, with approval. "Good—good"; "very good"; "excellent."

At the end he brought his hand down upon his knee with a slap. "Tonnerre de Dieu, that is well put!"

Barabant, who was soaring in the seventh heaven, made a superhuman effort and forced back a smile. Dossonville, much amused, tapped him on the shoulder.

"Come, it is not a crime to be pleased with one's self."

"You think it will do?" Barabant stammered.

"Splendid! And now to convince this suspicious republican." He eyed him a moment, enjoying the surprise his next words would cause. "Suppose you return with me to Santerre."

Barabant, astounded at this acquaintance with his doings, dropped his jaw.

"So, do you think I would employ you without some knowledge of your actions?" He enjoyed for a moment Barabant's embarrassment. "Come, and Santerre shall reassure you." At the door he paused, cast a rapid glance at the impoverished fittings, and drew out his purse. "Republican or not, the essential thing is to dine." Then evading the young fellow's thanks, he led the way into the city.

It was now toward twilight. The streets were choked with laborers returning home. In the air was an unwonted stir, a muttering, defiant and eager, as the crowd discussed openly, with impassioned questions, the prospective attack on the Tuileries.

"It is for to-night, sure?"

"For to-night, yes, at the tocsin."

"It's true, is it, the National Guards are coming over?"

"They've armed the Marseillais."

"Who?"

"Pétion."

"Vive Pétion!"

Hundreds of National Guards fraternized with the crowd, reassuring them. Occasionally was to be seen the glimmer of a weapon, a scythe, a cutlass, or a half-concealed dagger. Questioners stopped them from time to time.

"Is it true, we are to attack to-night?"

Dossonville shrugged his shoulders.

"If the tocsin sounds you are. That is all I know."

From time to time there were new accessions in the streets; until, as the two approached the Rue St. Antoine, they were forced to beg their way at every step.

Dossonville, his head flung back, reviewed the throng from his great height.

"What a people! Is there anything they will not dare?" he exclaimed. "Brave people! Sublime people!"

They passed through a side street, deserted except for some straggler hastening toward the human torrent. Dossonville, in a burst of confidence, laid his hand on his companion's shoulder.

"That was good to see. I, Citoyen Barabant—I take nothing seriously. Men, individuals, are but blind little animals wriggling for a day or so. I have seen too much of selfishness, of wickedness, of deceits and hypocrisy, to be moved by human motives. Nothing really matters, nothing is serious. But when I see such a sight as that, a whole people rising with one accord, ah, then that thrills me; yes, I am moved!"

Barabant was silent, more perplexed concerning his companion than ever, and in this reflective mood he persevered, resolving to be on his watch for artifices and tricks. About the brasserie of the famous brewer the throng was massed so tightly that the two companions would have stuck thirty feet away, unable to turn, had not Santerre, from an upper window, perceived the lanky form of Dossonville. The moment his eye fell upon that appealing figure, he started up, as though awaiting him, and hurrying down-stairs, appeared at the entrance, where, by dint of command and abuse, he managed to open a passage, through which the crowd disgorged them.

Barabant, at a nod from Dossonville, remained in an anteroom listening to the compressed rumble of the crowd, that reached him through the open window on the warm, suffocating air. He did not have long to wait. Santerre soon reappeared, excited and red with the emotion communicated to his fleshy head. Dossonville, more tranquil, called him to them.

"I must take a message to the Bonnet Rouge," he said. "It is urgent. So I must leave you—only, I do not forget." He glanced at him, adding slyly: "Is there anything you care to ask of the Citoyen Santerre?"

Barabant, gulping down his confusion, cried: "Nothing."

"Good. Then you are no longer afraid you are dealing with an agent of the perfidious Pitt?"

Barabant seized the occasion to vanish through the side exit, carrying with him the memory of a chuckle.

Nicole no sooner had dismissed Barabant than she regretted the act. Her intuition had warned her that caprice was necessary to counteract her bonhomie, which might have produced in the young man an assurance of facile conquest. But, left to her own devices, to her astonishment she found the solitude oppressive. She made an effort to dispel the ennui by seeking Goursac; but no sooner had she perceived him than, apprehending the banter in which he was privileged to indulge, she halted and then turned away.

Toward evening, according to her custom, she joined Louison in search of supper.

"What have you done with your companion?" the girl asked at once.

"I dismissed him long ago," Nicole answered carelessly: from that quarter she welcomed attack. "A man interferes with the business."

"How did you meet him?"

"Why, I thought you knew! He has taken the room across from us!"

"Ah, indeed. He seems interesting." She took her companion's arm and said abruptly, "I have taken a fancy to him, so garde à toi!"

Nicole, not certain whether she spoke in jest or in earnest, abandoned uneasily the conversation, saying, "Where do we dine to-night?"

"At the Bonnet Rouge."

"Why there?"

"It is the rendezvous for the Marseillais. If there is to be an attack, we'll have the news."

"Do you think it will be for to-night?"

"Yes; there is something in the air that makes me think so."

Their way soon involved them in a network of dusky, gaping streets. On each side somber walls, peopled with dim, curious flecks of headgear, strained upward and back in a bulging effort to draw down a little more of the allotted strip of sky. The windows of taverns, on the ground floor, were beginning to redden and to cast faint streaks across the black, oozing streets; but the frugal inhabitants of upper stories, in deference to the price of candles, still hung on the sills, causing the evening to resound with the nervous chatter of window-to-window speculation.

At times the tension of conjecture and discussion would be broken by the bass voice of a passing laborer thundering forth,

"Ça ira! Ça ira! Ça ira!"

Above the soprano of women's voices and the thin piping of children responded feverishly:

"La liberté s'établira:
Malgré les tyrans tout réussira!"

They found the cabaret beginning to fill up by twos and threes—workingmen for the most part: water-carriers divesting themselves of their barrels at the door with a sigh of contentment; wood-carriers, with relaxed limbs, slipping gratefully into the hard wooden benches; women of the markets, corpulent, quick-tongued, smelling of onion and garlic; erstwhile actors still with the strut of the stage; an occasional bourgeois in misfortune; a handful of gamins, impudent and witty—all discussing feverishly the projected attack.

The two girls, perceiving the congestion in the outer room, elbowed their way to where, by an inner door, a waiter of exceptional but broken height was scanning the crowd with an eye to orders.

"Well, Citoyen Boudgoust, what news?"

At Louison's question, he showed the palms of his hands, finally volunteering:

"Santerre is to send us word."

"There's room beyond?"

"You are going to eat?"

"Of course," Louison said impatiently, as he barred the way. "Besides, mon ami, don't you think we know what's going on?"

He allowed them to pass, grumbling, "Every one comes to talk; no one to eat."

In the farther hall the crowd was thinner and composed mostly of Marseillais and the National Guard, who looked up furtively, until half a dozen greetings removed their suspicions.

"Good evening, Citoyenne Nicole."

In her astonishment, she turned to find Geneviève.

"What are you doing here, child?" she cried.

"I am listening."

"You are no longer afraid?"

"We are to attack," the girl said proudly, and her eyes snapped with defiant ardor.

"Bravo, little one!" laughed Nicole. "Sit with us, then."

She turned to Louison in explanation.

"She is my protégée who is coming to me for lessons."

Louison nodded without surprise and turned her slow, restrained gaze on the room, while the eyes of Nicole, full of enthusiasm, leaped from group to group in rapid, eager scrutiny, resting finally on a knot of Marseillais near by. One man dominated these uncouth, bristling, living arsenals—a squat figure, sprawling under the grotesque shadows of the lamp, which further distorted his huge bulk and bullet head. One ungainly, crooked hand leaned in ponderous support upon the table; the other was flourished above him in frantic gestures, magnetic, absurd, comic, and terrible, as he harangued his comrades, who acclaimed his exhortations with shouts that burst above the ceaseless roar of the room.

"They are not very coquette," Nicole said critically, "and not very clean."

"Ah, but think how they have marched, all the way from Marseilles!" Geneviève cried, in protest.

"You know them, then?" Nicole asked, astonished at this side of the girl.

"Yes."

"And that bear of a man in the center, do you know his name?"

"Yes," she answered, with a slight disconcertion. "He is the Citoyen Javogues."

"He looks like an ogre."

"Wait till you hear him."

"Really!" answered Nicole, with a smile which threw the girl into confusion.

At this moment a rumble reached them from the outer room. Boudgoust, profoundly dejected, appeared, followed by the insouciant figure of Dossonville. Instantly the room was filled with cries.

"What news?"

"What news from Santerre?"

"We attack?"

"For to-night?"

Dossonville, facing the eager, breathless gallery, shrugged his shoulders, uttering but one word:

"Postponed."

A roar of rage and disappointment drowned his voice.

"Citoyens!" he cried, "I am but announcing the decision; I did not make it. The tyrants are intrenched. Mandat is in ambush at the Pont Neuf and the Arcade St. Jean. The leaders have decided the moment is unfavorable."

The storm of protests increased.

"More delay! Enough of waiting!"

"Mon Dieu, we are not cowards!"

"And the Prussians?"

"Hé, yes, are we to wait for the foreign bandits?"

"Javogues! Javogues!"

"Javogues, lead us!"

"Lead us, Javogues!"

Nicole felt through the child at her side a sudden trembling and drawing of breath. Then into the center of the suddenly quiet room lurched the squat figure, bareheaded, bare-armed, bare-chested but for a tattered shirt. He seemed rooted to the floor, like a mound transformed to human shape, quivering in the primeval mold and passions.

"Well, yes, I'll lead you!" The huge fist, describing a circle, crashed upon a table. "We're here to fight. We'll wait no longer. Hesitate and bandy words and deliberate whoever wants—we are not such! We have suffered and ached. We have been crushed to the ground, saddled to the earth,—we, human beings, like cattle, and we remember our wrongs. Fear? Neither God nor men do we fear. We came here, we, marching from Marseilles,—all the way from Marseilles,—to wipe out the accursed tyrants, to make things go faster, and, by God, they shall go!"

Nicole saw the hideous face transformed, lighted up with the glow of martyrdom. From lungs of leather there burst a welcoming response. Dossonville, facing the fanatic without a change of position, waited imperturbably the lull. Geneviève was breathing hard, in her excitement seizing the hand of her protectress.

"Bravo, patriot, you are eloquent!" came at last the calm answer of Dossonville. "But what can you do? March and be made into beefsteaks? The people, it is true, are hungry, but not a step will the sections move without Santerre. Will you march alone? What say you?"

"I say they are traitors who would halt us!" burst forth Javogues, glancing at the man who dared to jest with him.

"Meaning Santerre?"

"Meaning those who bear false messages. I don't like these manners. Who are you?"

"My friend," Dossonville said, with cool scorn of the threatening throng, "you are curious."

"Aristocrat!"

"Am I?"

"I say you are!"

"Indeed!"

"You will not answer?"

"Certainly! Citoyen Dossonville, at present lieutenant of the Section des Bonnes Nouvelles, in the past soldier, sailor, actor, innkeeper, a bit of everything except the law and the church. Citoyen Boudgoust," he continued, shifting his head just enough to bring into range the apathetic waiter, "before this fire-eater is at my throat, come, vouch for me!"

The hang-down head wabbled a moment on the bent shoulders.

"Yes, yes, a good patriot, Citoyen Javogues, and an eater of little aristocrats."

"As all good patriots should be!" retorted Dossonville, gravely. "There, citoyen, good patriots should not quarrel when there are so many tyrants to be digested. There is my hand—touch!"

Javogues stared at the proffered hand a moment stolidly, drunkenly, then deliberately folded his arms. A murmur of dissent gathered volume.

"Comrade, you are wrong!"

"Give him your hand!"

"Aye, touch together!"

Above the outburst the voice of Dossonville rose acridly.

"Dame! mon ami, you bring strange manners from Marseilles."

"I bring something else."

"And that is—"

"The way to tell a traitor."

"And that is—"

"By the look in his eyes!" Raising his fist, the Marseillais lurched forward with the angry shout of "Spy!"

A dozen men rushed to separate them, while the Marseillais, echoing the accusation of their leader, surged furiously forward. Louison and Nicole, with a common impulse, seized Dossonville, and in the confusion drew him into the hall and out by a rear entrance into the cool of the night.

"Thanks, my dears!" he cried, once free of the turmoil, nonchalant and flippant as ever. "It is always difficult to find the right word on which to retreat with dignity. You saved me the trouble. What! it is you, Louison and Nicole? Diable! if it were only one I could offer my eternal devotion—for a week."

"Citoyen," cried Nicole, reprovingly, "you were wrong to bait him. You have gained an enemy."

"On the contrary," Louison interposed, and strangely on her cold face there was a flash of admiration. "Citoyen Dossonville, you were splendid!"

"No, I was a fool," he said. "It is very stupid that some men must be at each other's throats from the first glance. Diable! I have a feeling this fellow will bother me some day. However, it will add a little interest to these quiet times. Au revoir—I must be off. If I stay I shall be falling in love with both of you. What good would that do? Thanks, and good night!"

In the distance his footsteps grew faint, while for a time the gay chorus of the Carmagnole told of his passage.

Nicole, leaving Louison, sought Geneviève, and, with a desire to reconnoiter, struck out through the now quiet Faubourg toward the Hôtel de Ville. There, all was animation with the arrival of the delegates from the forty-eight sections, assembling to deliberate upon a plan of action, while from time to time messengers passed like streaks down the steps and across the crowd, leaving the disturbance of their trail on the surface.

They passed along the Seine, where the river, as though, too, at the end of the day it sought its rest, lay still and black, shot across with faint reflections. They arrived at the Tuileries only to be barred passage by a patrol. Everywhere as they made the rounds they found the palace guarded and prepared; while a hundred other scouts passed ceaselessly to and fro, examining the frowning walls, grim in the shadow of night.

A dozen rumors were current: the palace was filled with Swiss and Chevaliers du Poignard; there were cannons masked at every point; the windows were protected with screens of oak; the court were dancing inside, drinking to the white cockades, as they had done at Versailles. Others affirmed that the city was to be set on fire from the four quarters; that the king had fled; that the National Assembly was to be arrested. Nicole, her curiosity satisfied and wearying of these wild rumors, returned home. At the Faubourg St. Antoine they found everything tranquil, and retired for the night. It was then half-past ten.

In their room Geneviève hazarded the question for which Nicole had waited with amused patience.

"Tell me, Nicole, what did you think of him?"

"Of whom?"

"Of the Citoyen Javogues. Was I not right?"

"He frightens me," Nicole said frankly. "He had the air of a butcher—a madman. Well, how shall I express it? He made me tremble, almost with a premonition of danger."

"Ah, you cannot understand him," Geneviève protested. "To me he is heroic!"

"What a little Jacobin!" Nicole said, with a smile. Without attaching further importance to what she considered the whim of a child, she added: "Well, mon enfant, here is your room. The half of it is yours for as long as you want it."

She passed to the window, casting a longing glance at the dark window opposite. Surprised at Geneviève's silence, she turned, a little provoked. The child was crying.

"Dear Geneviève!" she cried, springing to her side and taking her in her arms. "Don't try to thank me; I understand."

But the girl, through her sobs, murmured again and again, "Thank you, ah, thank you!"

"But it is I who am thankful," Nicole protested. "You bring me something to love and to care for. I was getting used to solitude, which is dangerous."

Checking her thanks, she snuffed the candle, stretching out upon the bed beside the girl.

"Yes, it is bad for one to be always alone," she said.

Geneviève timidly covered her hands with kisses.

"No, no, kiss me on the cheek," Nicole said. "And now, if you are going to obey, go right to sleep."

The child nestled closer, drawing Nicole's arm about her. The embrace seemed strange to Nicole, and, without quite understanding why, she sought to draw her arm away.

V
THE TAKING OF THE TUILERIES

Boom! Boom!

All at once Nicole and Geneviève found themselves on their feet in the middle of the dark room. Through the open window there fell upon their ears a wild metal shriek, hoarse, furious, angry, that spoke of fire and of the dungeon—the boom of the tocsin.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

Nicole bounded to the window. Below she beheld startled heads in white night-caps scattered down the length of the walls. As one dog wakes the pack, another and another bell took up the call, till from every point of the horizon broke forth the jangle and clang of the iron throats of Paris.

Below, a few tiny cries rose through the murmur. Across the roofs came the thin shrieks of a woman. Lights began to appear, forms clad in night-dress. Suddenly across the court tore into the night Barabant's frenzied voice.

"To arms! to arms!"

As though awaiting the signal, there burst upon the ear the rumbling of drums, the scattered popping of firearms, calls and answering calls flung from roof to roof.

"To arms, citoyens, to arms!"

A frenzy passed over Nicole. She leaned far out, and gathering her voice, echoed:

"To arms!"

She bounded back into the room, knocking over the chair, snatched up her cloak, bounded to the window to cry "To arms!" crashed down the stairs, dragging Geneviève, flung out of the blind passage, bumping and bruising her shoulders, down and out into the streets.

From every doorway figures shot forth and passed, running toward the north. The two girls, at top speed, joined the crowd. They passed a woman with a torch, whose hair stood out in long streams against the racing; la Mère Corniche hobbling along as fast as her old legs would take her; families of five and six running in packs, panting and silent, while beneath, above, about, from disgorging cellars, from loud-flung open windows, from every bell the city writhed in nightmare.

Distancing their companions, they arrived among the first before the brasserie of Santerre, where the Quinze-Vingts were assembling, forming quickly into ranks. From one window Jambony, the crier, in an enormous red cap, was feeding pikes to a hundred outstretched hands. The arrival of fresh torches caused the walls to loom up like lurid cliffs, sparkling in spots where a window-pane blazed back the reflection. From the windows flattened faces with black-encircled eyes looked down,—children too young, men and women too old, to survive in the press below: unhuman faces of unhuman beings, like a multitude of rats driven to shelter by the influx of a torrent.

Below, the black mass surged in, spattered, under the glow of the torches, with the red of the liberty-caps, while two banners hung like huge blurs above the tossing surface of pikes and weapons. The noise was deafening, the confusion beyond control. Men rushed in and out, their arms flung wide and high, bellowing:

"Death to the tyrants!"

"Death to the fat Louis!"

A slip of a girl, clinging on a window-sill, harangued the mob; a fishwife, astride her husband, comic and furious, beat the air and screamed to the crowd to dye the Seine red. Hags with threatening fists shrieked themselves into a frenzy:

"To the Tuileries! To the Tuileries!"

Some, foaming, overcome with their passions, collapsed on the ground. The anger of the mob against the queen gathered at times in bursts and shouts:

"Death to Mme. Veto!"

"Death to the Austrian!"

Unthinkable obscenities were coupled with her name and tossed from eddy to eddy. The Marseillais, gathering in a body, dominated the tumult with the swelling chords of their battle hymn that on their voices became a chant of carnage and a thing of terror.

It was more than a mob: it was the populace in eruption. All the human passions and emotions were there, the basest and the noblest. There were the scum—the lepers, the beggars, and the criminals diffused among the zealots, the fanatics, and the idealists. There were the frankly curious and the adventurous, and those with hatred and vengeance in their hearts. There was youth, warm-blooded and chivalrous, stirred by visions, and old age impatient to see the dawn—all hoarse and all clamorous to march.

The order did not come. For an hour they waited, trembling for the word. The uproar subsided a little. The torches began to drop out: there were moments of darkness when one could hardly distinguish the faces about. The cries to advance changed to inquiries. Boudgoust brought back the report that Pétion, the mayor, was a captive, held as a hostage in the Tuileries.

Santerre, the Goliath, passed among them, distributing hand-shakes, reassuring them, counseling patience. The Assembly would meet and summon Pétion to its bar and the court would not dare detain him. Some listened, half satisfied; others, the Marseillais specially, cried out for action. They waited still another hour and a half. The first outburst had seemingly exhausted the populace: they remained quietly, awed at the immensity of their daring. Many, tiring of the long vigil on foot, imitated Nicole and Geneviève and stretched out upon the pavements, forming little shallows throughout the length of the street. A few melted away to seek sleep or food. No more torches were lighted. The few that spluttered on became pale and effaced before the drab of the morning. An ashen glow stole over the street. Then the army that had huddled through the night roused itself, shook itself, gathered spirit and anger and again clamored to advance.

Santerre, besieged by the eager, hesitated. He sent off a band of pikemen and then the Marseillais, but the rest he held irresolutely.

Suddenly a cry started up from the outskirts of the crowd. A tall man was seen running toward them with outstretched hands, trying to pierce the crowd that closed around him. A great shout went up:

"The news! The news!"

On the outskirts a hundred hands were flung up, then a thousand. The sound of a mighty cry could be heard indistinguishable, rumbling, gathering volume, sweeping over the crowd.

"Pétion is free!"

"Pétion is at the Hôtel de Ville!"

Santerre hesitated no longer. He descended from his brasserie and gave the signal. The enormous mass started, moving swiftly, consuming its way like a glacier. A scullion, with the sudden converging impulse toward comradeship that now permeated the throng, sought anxiously for a familiar face.

A pikeman from a group, seeing his trouble, called out:

"Hé, comrade, you seek friends. We are your brothers. March with us."

In measure, as they swarmed toward the Tuileries, fresh reports came back. Mandat had been summoned. The artillery at the Pont Neuf had been withdrawn. Mandat was at the Hôtel de Ville. Mandat had fallen before the vengeance of the crowd.

They hastened forward and rolled into the Place de la Grève. It was then seven o'clock in the morning. There, where they expected the order to attack, they were compelled again to wait. When they clamored they were told that they were delaying for the Faubourg St. Marceau, which was to join them at the Pont Neuf. Then these hordes, who had passed the night in suspense, in the midst of rumors and counterrumors, sent up a great shout of anger:

"Treachery!"

The populace that could dare anything could not stand suspense. A panic was imminent; but firmer spirits began to exhort them. On all sides knots of men flung one of their number into the air, where, from the shoulders of a comrade, witty, brilliant, and magnetic, he calmed the crowd with laughter.

Nicole and Geneviève, circulating from group to group, were halted by a familiar voice, and beheld, aloft the giant shoulders of Javogues, the ardent figure of Barabant addressing the throng.

"Peace, good, kind, gentle, loyal citizens," he was saying mockingly, "you will disturb the royal slumbers. Why such impatience? The Austrian cannot see you at such an hour. You are forgetting etiquette!" A roar of laughter showed him his ground. "I assure you, aristocrats will not fight before breakfast, before they are shaved and powdered and dressed. Patience, my Sans-Culottes; we do not want to stab them in their beds; give them time to sleep and breakfast, that we may show them how Sans-Culottes can fight. They are not Sans-Culottes; only Sans-Culottes can fight with empty stomachs!

"For shame, citizens; one does not grumble in the face of danger. Look about you. The moment is sublime. You who have felled the Bastille, you who brought Capet back from Versailles—you are now to strike the great blow for freedom, and you grumble. What matters it if we have waited twenty hours or twenty days, if we may see such an event? Who would not rather die at such a moment than live in any age or in any condition the world has ever known? Citizens, the moment is sublime; be ye also sublime!"

He slid to the ground, amid uproarious approval, satisfied and elate. Javogues, the Atlas, bellowed out, "That's the way to talk; he is right! Vive la Nation!"

"Vive le Citoyen Barabant!"

Barabant, recognizing the voice of Nicole, turned, while the crowd, eagerly catching up his name, saluted it with cheers.

"Bravo the Parisian!"

The second voice was Louison's. The two girls, each armed with a cutlass, sent him their applause over the crowd. But, while the frank enthusiasm of Nicole inspired him, there was something in the tolerant smile of Louison that seemed to mock his elation. Before he could reach them, the crowd, abandoning the cries of treachery, exploded in anger at the Faubourg St. Marceau.

"Fine patriots!"

"What the devil are they doing?"

"We do not need them; to the Tuileries without them!"

"Give us news of them!"

"Citoyens, I'll bring you news," Barabant retorted. "A little patience and you shall know of the Faubourg St. Marceau."

He returned through the chafing multitude, and departed down the Rue St. Honoré as fast as his legs could carry him. At the Place du Carrousel the mob was besieging the entrance to the Tuileries, clamoring for admittance. As he hesitated, the gate was flung open and the mass, with the quickness of gunpowder seeking an outlet, crashed in. Barabant, all else forgotten, hurled himself forward in a blind endeavor to reach the court. He tripped and fell, and before he could gain his feet the mob had passed him.

There had been not a moment of hesitation. They rushed into the trap, heeding neither the windows, bristling with muskets, that confronted them nor the walls that hemmed them in. Leaping and shouting, they ran to the vestibule at the end. There they saw a mass of red that colored it from top to bottom—a mass perfectly ordered. It was the Swiss, drawn up line by line on every step, their muskets at aim, awaiting the word.

The first assailants stopped irresolutely, but the impetus of those behind swept them on, until the vestibule was consumed and the first ranks looked into the threatening barrels. Still no sound. The two forces, the machine and the monster, looked into each other's eyes, noting little details. The populace, gaining confidence, began to jest, saluting the soldiers with friendly greetings, inviting them to join them.

Some one in the mob, extending a long crook, hooked a Swiss and drew him into the vortex, amid shouts of laughter. They clapped their hands, laughing like children, and set to work at this new game. A second, a third, five Swiss, were thus fished out of the ranks without resisting.

All at once, from the balcony above, a voice cried:

"Fire!"

As the sea with an immense impulse recoils from an earthquake, there was a vast recoil in the mob, an exact explosion from the machine. The smoke, rushing down the vestibule, swirled into the air and lifted. The officer leaned curiously over the balcony and gave the order to advance. The red ranks moved down and over the inanimate mound; of all those who a moment before had laughed incredulously not one survived.

Outside, the mob broke and fled up the Place du Carrousel, recoiling from the horrid vestibule, where suddenly there formed a bubble of red, that grew larger and trickled over the garden, widening and assuming mass and shape. At times across the red, like a diamond meeting the sun, there ran a brilliant flash. At every flash men stumbled in their flight and pitched forward. Pell-mell into the Rue St. Honoré they ran, routed, but full of anger and enthusiasm.

At this moment the sections of the Marais swept in, gathered them up, and, burning with vengeance at the sight of their wounds, rushed on to the attack. Barabant, who had received a flesh-wound in the hand, had barely time to bind it up before he was swept again into the Carrousel.

Then a vast hurrah burst from them, a shout of relief and of battle. From the quais the guerrilla band of the Marseillais were rolling forward, formidable, grim, and unleashed. Suddenly their ranks parted and two tongues of fire lashed out; in the solid bank of the Swiss two gaps appeared. A frenzy possessed the assaulting mass. It flung itself forward, without method, attacking only with its anger. The Swiss reëntered the vestibule, issuing forth from time to time to deliver a volley.

Barabant, in the midst of the swirl, lost consciousness of his acts, swayed by sudden, unreasoning passion. He fired fast and faster, caught by the infection of his comrades, cursing, exhorting wildly, laughing; but his bullets, without objective, flattened themselves against the death-dealing walls. At times he saw, through the thick smoke, Javogues and his comrades dragging a cannon forward toward the barracks. At another moment there suddenly emerged out of the mêlée the figure of the two bouquetières.

Amid the swirl of smoke, Nicole appeared to Barabant's excited senses as a goddess exhorting them to battle. Her hair had tumbled, rioting, her dress was torn open at the throat, her bare arms were stained with powder and red with the contact of the wounded; and yet, as she loaded a musket, or presented it to a volunteer, or showed him the flashing walls, she laughed one of those laughs sublime with the indifference to danger and the joy of heroism that inflame the souls of those who hear it, and transform the wavering with the frenzy of sacrifice.

On the contrary, Louison, among all the confusion and the tumult, moved quietly, gathering the bullets from the fallen and returning them to her friend. Her face was calm, cold; her eyes sought everything and showed nothing; and though she moved incessantly on her quests, she was apart from all—a spectator.

Barabant, unable to join them, was carried step by step toward the barracks. Once he slipped in a pool of blood and went down, his companion falling across him. He called to him to rise, but the man was dead. A woman of the halles freed him.

A series of explosions almost hurled him back; the next moment the barracks, rent in gaps, were swept with a sheet of flame. The assailants, with a cry of triumph, hurled themselves into the palace, while the Swiss, forced up the staircase, broke and fled, pursued and shot down by the victors.

Through the apartments, shattering doors, overturning furniture, howling along the empty corridors, the mob crashed in, as the first victorious blast of a tempest, shrieking:

"À la mort! À la mort!"

One by one the flying Swiss were overtaken. Packs of the invaders leaped upon them, burying them from view, until, stabbed with a dozen useless thrusts, their bodies were flung with exulting cries from the windows; while as the foremost stopped to enjoy their prey, the herd swept to the front with hungry arms and the ever-rising shout:

"Death to all! Death to all!"

Barabant, racing ahead to save the women, soon found himself in front, running beside a Marseillais, who cried to him with the voice of Javogues:

"Keep with me, citoyen, keep with me! Leave the curs to the others!"

A Swiss, hearing them at his back, fell on his knees, shrieking for mercy.

"Leave him. Don't stop!" Javogues panted. Seizing Barabant's arm, he bore him down a side gallery, shouting:

"There he is! There he is!"

At the end of the corridor Barabant beheld a tall form disappearing at the head of a narrow stairway.

Up this they rushed, into the single outlet, a guard-room, only to find it empty. Javogues threw himself furiously against the walls.

"I saw him, I saw him; he is here somewhere!"

"Who?"

"Dossonville! He was among the Swiss. I saw him." He ran around the room, assailing it with his huge fists. All at once he gave a cry, and lifting the hatchet he bore, he sent a secret door crashing in.

"He is here!"

He hacked his way through and disappeared, thundering down the passage. Barabant, only half comprehending what had happened, remained a moment in perplexity. But the sound of women's cries startled him again to activity. He darted back into the current of the mob and gained the women's apartments. At the foot of the staircase an officer of the National Guard was crying:

"We don't kill women!"

"Spare the women!" Barabant echoed.

A dozen others took up the cry.

"The Republic does not make war on women!"

The mob, balked of half its vengeance by the firmness of a dozen officers, turned to desecration and pillage. Troops of women, like furies, swarmed through the royal apartments, tearing the beds to pieces, exulting, foul and crazed.

Barabant, sickening at the sight of unnamable excesses, retraced his way down the strewn galleries, heaped with overturned furniture, and tapestries pulled from the wall, spattered with blood and dirt. Heedless of the shouts above him, he passed down the vestibule and over the mountain of slain, suffocated by the stench and the horror of wide-mouthed corpses. Now that the crisis was over, his inflammable nature recoiled before the ugliness of the triumph.

While Louison and Geneviève had been drawn into the frantic mob which swept the palace, Nicole had remained outside, joining the hundreds of women who visited the wounded or sought, in agony, among the dead. She also, with a new anxiety, sped among the slain with a sinking dread before each upturned face.

All at once a familiar voice cried at her side:

"Help! help!"

The cry came from beneath the body of a Marseillais. With the aid of a fishwife she pulled away the corpse, discovering the shaken, limp form of the mountebank Cramoisin.

"Ah, mon Dieu," she cried, forgetting the rancor of the woman in the patriot, "are you wounded?"

"I—I think so."

"Where?"

"I don't know," he stammered, rising weakly to his feet. "Is it ended?"

"In thy stomach, I guess, my brave fellow!" the fishwife cried with rough scorn. "It seems to have failed thee!"

"You do not know him: he is a hero!" Nicole cried, ironically. "Wait a moment; we'll find the wound!"

With a laugh, the two sought to seize him; but Cramoisin, having recovered the use of his legs, escaped in a ludicrous, snarling flight.

Suddenly Nicole beheld Barabant stumbling forth from the vestibule. All coquetry forgot, she sprang to him with the cry:

"Barabant, you are wounded!"

He looked at his arm and saw it was covered with blood. He passed his hand over his face; a scalp-wound trickled a red stream down his forehead. He sat down while she hurriedly washed the wounds and bandaged them. When he essayed to rise, a dizziness made his step so unsteady that Nicole drew his arm over her shoulder, laughing at his feeble resistance.

"Allons, this is the hour of the women. I'll bring you back. Don't be afraid to lean on me!"

She put her arm about his waist and impelled him gently. He resisted no longer, and together slowly they moved homeward over the stricken field, amid the groaning and the silent.

He had a misty recollection of a phantasmagoric passage, of rapidly moving figures hideous with blood, of heads dancing on pikes above him, of stretchers bearing inanimate things, of rushing, floating women, of the sudden rumbling of drums, of companies swinging past him, of interminable streets, and of cliffs, mountains high, that gave forth shrieks of triumph. Then in the city, delirious with joy and sorrow, delirium, too, rushed through his brain, his head fell heavily upon Nicole's bare shoulder, and the will deserting his limbs, he slipped from her arms heavily to the ground.

VI
THE HEART OF A WOMAN

When at last Nicole had brought Barabant to his room, she was very tired. Goursac, whom she had summoned to help her, knelt by the bed to examine the unconscious form. Every now and then he turned a questioning look upon the girl, as though to penetrate the indifferent attitude she maintained.

"Why don't you say something?" Nicole cried at last, her anxiety mastering her prudence. "Is it so serious?"

"A mere scratch," he grumbled; "nothing to make such a fuss over. If he hadn't been as weak as a woman—"

Nicole, reassured, smiled at his ill-humor, knowing the mood of old. Goursac, furious at such a reception of his sarcasm, turned on her angrily.

"You are like all the rest—just as stupid. Because a young fellow gets a scratch and you pilot him home, you call that a romance. You know well enough what that leads to!"

"That may be true; why shouldn't I have my romance as well as another?"

"You say that to plague me. You know that is not so!" he said impatiently. "Now give me a bandage."

Stooping, Nicole seized her petticoat; but finding it stained with traces of the combat, she dropped it, and calling to him to wait, passed through the window and across the gutter, swaying lithely against the roof. In a moment she returned with half of a sheet, which they quickly tore into bandages.

"There; with a little rest—a chance to recover some blood—the fever will abate!" Preparing a sling, Goursac jerked his head toward the bed and demanded: "You are not going to watch?"

"Certainly I am!"

"Then say at once," he cried point-blank, "that you imagine you are in love!"

"Goursac, my friend, you are ridiculous with your ideas," Nicole answered impatiently. "You know that the Citoyen Barabant arrived only yesterday. We are good comrades. That's all!"

"Yes, yes, yes!"

He wrinkled his lips in scornful unbelief, raised his shoulders to his ears, and disappeared, heavily, down the stairs, grumbling ironically, "A man lies to deceive others; a woman lies to deceive herself!"

A moment later he called back:

"Hé, above there!"

Nicole went to the landing.

"Is that you, the comrade?"

"Yes, old cynic."

"If you need me, stamp twice on the floor."

"Agreed."

"Return now to your—acquaintance."

Nicole, laughing, returned to the bedside. She placed her hand on the heated forehead, frowned, smoothed down the covers, arranged the discarded clothes, and, after a moment's reflection, departed over the roof to her room.

When she again appeared, she had removed all traces of the battle. She pulled a chair near the bed, loosened her hair, scattering it over her shoulders, and began to comb it out, unraveling the tangle with many grimaces and an oft-wrung "Aïe! aïe!"

Occasionally she consulted a pocket-mirror, then resumed the combing, humming to herself. Barabant, his forehead enveloped in white, his arm in a sling, lay with his head turned toward her, one arm escaping bare above the covers. She regarded approvingly the lithe muscles suggested under the soft skin, and, ceasing her humming, pronounced:

"He is well made!"

She leaned over the bed and opened the collar of his shirt, revealing the full throat.

"Tiens, he's as white as a woman."

She withdrew, and resumed her humming.

"But, Dieu merci, it's not a woman." She was taking up another strand when the stairs cried out and Louison entered. Nicole frowned and said curtly:

"Ah, it's you, is it? Who told you?"

"La Mère Corniche. How goes it?" she asked, indicating Barabant.

"Well."

"Are you coming to eat something?"

"No, I'm staying here."

"Is it so serious?"

"I don't know," she said, continuing her combing. "He pleases me."

Louison stood at the bed, looking down. "Not bad; he's interesting. I noticed he had good eyes."

Nicole stopped her combing, and a frown gathered above the childish cheeks, as she cried impetuously:

"Louison, no interference, do you hear? Or—"

"Or what?" The dark eyebrows arched slightly, but the deep eyes remained cold. Nicole did not answer. Louison returned to the contemplation of the young man a moment longer, then reluctantly rousing herself from her reverie, turned on her heel. Her eye, falling on Nicole, regarded her with a trace of amusement.

"Child!" she said, standing in the doorway, her face relaxing into a smile. "You have chosen the best moment, my dear: you are adorable!"

Nicole listened, immovable, until the last footstep had grown silent. Then drawing her lips together, she seized her knees with her hands, and thus curbed, her eyes fixed themselves in intense contemplation, while several times a sudden anger knit her features before she shook off the disagreeable emotions and sought the cool of the window.

At a rustling from the bed she returned quickly. Barabant had stirred slightly, but so as to throw his weight upon the wounded arm. She slipped her arm under him and moved him to a more comfortable position. This maternal solicitude, slight as it was, awakened a new emotion in her. She arranged his hair, and seeking hungrily for any further service, began to bathe the hot eyelids.

Barabant, under the gentle stroking, opened his eyes. The confines appeared to him vast and silent, the window far removed and small. The long August twilight invaded the room with the delicious promise of a quieter night, while from without the distant, scattered sounds of rejoicing reached his ears, through the corridors of insensibility, like the tinkle of soft music. He sighed contentedly and closed his eyes again.

Presently he said, turning his head a trifle, but without opening his eyes:

"Thou art really there, Nicole?"

The accent and the caress pierced to the depths the heart of the young girl, already stirred by the maternal impulse of the woman.

"Really here, yes."

But almost immediately, as though regretting the softness of the response, she added, in remonstrance:

"I have not given you permission to call me thou!"

"It is my gratitude that—that permits me."

"Ah, that is nice." She smiled with pleasure. "That was very prettily said."

"Nicole?"

"Yes."

"Place your ear to my lips; I cannot talk so far."

The girl, with a smile, divining the ruse, leaned over him. But Barabant making no sound, she withdrew, scrutinizing anxiously the hot face.

"Nicole."

"I am here."

Again she stooped, and this time so close that her hair swept his forehead.

"You are there?"

"Yes."

"I love you," he said drowsily.

"Oh, oh!" Nicole started back, blushing and amused; but looking down, she saw he had dropped again into the wanderings of delirium.

"He does not know what he says," she said, shaking her head. "Poor fellow!"

She watched him in his helplessness, and all at once she sighed; but it was a sigh that rose from the soul, and while it filled her heart, it passed on and awakened in her a famine of tenderness, leaving a longing for tears.

Motionless and perplexed, she stood staring down at the dim bed, her lips parted, her breast filling with deep breaths, until at last she turned reluctantly and sought the window, still uncertain, nor comprehending what was germinating within her.

The night was beginning; in the clear heavens the high moon was strengthening in luster at every moment. Across the stretch of window lights the sounds of revelry and rejoicing persisted faintly to her ears. The courtyard, deserted by the men, was hushed with the silence of fatigue. The laugh of a girl mounted at times, clear and playful, mingling with the deeper, good-humored protests of her companion. From a window a hag, chin in hand, followed the lovers with due interest. In another room a weary mother had fallen asleep with her baby still feeding at her breast. At other windows the women waited patiently the return of the men, bending mechanically over their knitting or crooning to the sleepy children. There, under the enduring, tedious night, Nicole stayed from minute to minute, pressing her clenched hand tensely against her lips; while within her breast beat tumult and a revolt against the slavery of women. She returned to the bedside, rebelling against this helpless man who drew her irresistibly from her independence.

"Nicole—"

It was Goursac calling, and she sprang furiously to the landing, rebuking him with a low: "Silence! he is asleep. What do you want?"

"If you are tired, I'll watch."

"No, no!" she answered angrily. The cry seemed to burst from her heart, threatened by the very thought of such exile.

She knelt at the bed hungrily, waiting jealously for an opportunity to ease the restless body, her revolt forgotten in the defense of her right to soothe and minister. She slipped her arm under his body, and drew his head upon her shoulder. A sigh of contentment rewarded her. He grew more quiet, breathing gentle breaths that disturbed her hair and fanned her throat. In the half-darkness she remained, with aching shoulder, holding him in her arms as though to defend him from all who would separate them. Several times, in an access of tenderness, she approached her lips to the unconscious forehead, but each time instinctively drew back from the surrender. She had a desire for tears, for laughter, for swift anger, that he should wake at last. She would have kept him there forever, weak and helpless, turning to her in trust and necessity. At times, with a sudden alarm, she asked herself what had happened, what could be these new emotions, until at last, in the disturbance and bewilderment of her soul, she saw the utter loneliness of her life, and the cry went up from her:

"Ah, mon Dieu, how unhappy I am!"

The full sun was beating into the room when Barabant awoke. His forehead was cold, his senses were sharp; but his memory struggled in vain to reconstruct the events of the afternoon. His arm confined in a sling brought back his wound, and Nicole, and the beginning of the tedious journey; beyond that a black wall rose up and shut out all vision. He turned over, calculating his strength, when, his eye traveling over the bedside, what was his stupefaction to behold Nicole stretched upon the floor. Her hands were pillowed under her cheek, where the long eyelashes showed sharply against the heightened color. She slept easily, the lips slightly parted as though smiling under happy dreams. Barabant watched her breathlessly, jealously putting off the awakening. But at this moment, as though aware of the intensity of his gaze, the girl opened her eyes, met the enraptured glance of Barabant a moment only, then sprang to her feet with a confusion which she sought to cover with a laughing "Good morning!"

"You have been here all night?" Barabant said, in astonishment.

"Why not?" Nicole noticed that he did not address her as "thou." She rearranged her dress and said with forced naturalness, "Do you think that is much to do for a patriot who is wounded?"

Barabant, displeased with the answer, made no reply.

"So you have decided to return to this world, citoyen?"

"Have I been delirious?"

"Do you remember nothing?"

"Nothing since—since the Place de la Grève." As this answer seemed to plunge Nicole into silence, he asked, "How did you get me here?"

"It wasn't difficult," she began more gaily. "I begged your way from block to block. Let me see; two water-carriers brought you half-way, then a coachman a block on his route, then another block on a litter, and finally a fishwife helped me to the end."

"You carried me?"

"Indeed, I am not a weakling; look at that." She extended her arms, laughing. "They are solid."

"And this?" Barabant touched the sling.

"Oh, that was the Citoyen Goursac."

"Who?"

"Your neighbor below, a brown man who buries his chin like this, and scowls. That reminds me, it is time he should see you."

"Nicole!"

"Well, what?"

"Not now; not just yet."

"Why not?"

"I wish to talk with you."

"The idea, as though I had nothing to do!" She raised her foot and stamped twice. "I have a desire to dine to-night, thank you."

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going to work." She picked up her possessions and made for the window, while Barabant cried excitedly:

"Nicole, I have not thanked you. Wait, let me thank you."

"Why?" She shrugged her shoulders. "I'd do that for any one."

Barabant raised himself on his elbow and threatened, half angrily: "Nicole, if you go, I'll follow you. I swear I'll follow you. I will. Look at me. I swear I will!"

"What good will it do you? I'll be gone."

She shook her head, and, deaf to his entreaties, disappeared; while Barabant, furious, fell back, baffled and perplexed, little suspecting the awakening that was taking place in Nicole.

VII
THE FEAR OF HAPPINESS

When Nicole reached her room, she found Geneviève up and waiting.

"What are you doing, child?" she cried sharply, to cover her confusion. "Why are you here?"

"I—I am waiting," Geneviève stammered, "to see if I could do anything for you."

"There is nothing. I am going out now myself."

"What!" cried the child, opening her eyes wide. "You are not going to stay with the poor fellow?"

"There is no need. He is well."

"But I thought—" She stopped, in confusion, and then clumsily beat a retreat to the door. "I'll go now. I—I only wanted to be of service."

Nicole waited only long enough to be sure of Geneviève's departure before descending in turn. Her little room was too narrow; it choked her. She had need of the open span of the sky to think over the new emotions.

After an hour of unprofitable solitude, feeling the need of a confidence which would lessen the tension of her thoughts, she sought Goursac, beginning timidly with the question:

"And the Citoyen Barabant, how is he?"

"Why, he is still alive, clamoring for you like a lost child for his mother."

"Goursac, my old friend," she said, taking his arm, "be serious and gentle for once. I am unhappy, and I want to talk with you."

"Ah, you love him," he said bitterly.

"Yes," she said slowly, as though the revelation had just come, "I love him."

"Then why do you avoid him?"

"I am afraid."

"Of what?"

"Of loving him too much."

"I don't understand."

She tried to tell him a little of her emotions at the bedside—the wonder and the swift, acute joy of ministering, the longing to tend and own. Goursac, with a few questions, led her on. They were now in the Tuileries, a little apart from the quick throng, the swish of skirts, the laughter and the hum. At last he said:

"My little Nicole, listen. Love is not something that comes to us from the outside: it is a need within ourselves. We each have our functions in this world and our needs. At the bottom, what is strongest and best in woman is the maternal instinct. Listen to me! You fall in love when the need within you becomes too insistent. Any one of a hundred men can appeal to you. It is the moment and not the man. You knew the maternal instinct for the first time when you had in your keeping the Citoyen Barabant. You think that it is he that has awakened you. Not at all; all these emotions have been in you, dormant; it is they, not he, which enchant you. Voyons—you do not listen—Nicole!"

"That's true," she said, rousing herself from her reverie. Her eyes had been deep in the bright to and fro of the promenaders, but she saw only the room under the attic, and felt only the hot head on her aching shoulder.

"After all, you are thinking only of him, and I am a fool," he said. "Nothing that I can say will make any difference. You will learn, as others have learned, on the steps of experience. Out of some curious twist within you, in some strange way of reasoning you will decide for yourself."

"I suppose so," she said drearily. "But I wanted to talk it out; you are kind to me."

"I," he said calmly—"I adore you."

"Be serious."

"That is serious."

"Truly?"

"You know it."

"Why?" she said meditatively, but half believing him.

"You are young," he answered, looking steadfastly at the charming profile. "And to see you is good for the eyes. You are youth, and I have not been old long enough to be reconciled to age. But you don't believe me."

"Yes."

"No; at least, you do not understand."

She did not return home until nightfall, and then did not cross Barabant's window-sill, but contented herself with an inquiry as to his condition; nor could artifice and entreaty retain her longer. The next day she did not appear at all.

Barabant, who saw in her absence nothing but coquetry, was furious with her, with himself, with all that kept him to his bed. The lagging, still hours seemed doubly lagging and still with the memory of the charm which the presence of the girl had brought to the bare walls. Time and time his eyes sought the empty floor where he had surprised her asleep; and, conjuring up that delightful picture, he accused himself in his unreasoning irritation for not having simulated insensibility throughout the day.

Why did she thus avoid him? He remembered their first encounter with Louison. Was she jealous of her comrade, or was it simply calculation? That Nicole should think of playing the coquette annoyed him exceedingly. He had yielded to the fascination of this gipsy from the moment she had taken his arm in the gardens of the Palais Royal with the mischievous "Barabant, you are a lucky fellow," with which she had opened their comradeship. But this easy, pleasurable interest had been fanned into a passionate flame at the storming of the Tuileries, where, by her fire, her tempestuous beauty, and her careless laughter, she had impressed herself imperishably on his imagination; and later the thought of her bearing him home, of her nursing, and of her tenderness had invaded his heart.

With the rapture of the first unfolding romance he abandoned himself utterly to the thought of her, while retaining in his deeper consciousness, as undebatable, that limit of common sense which must separate the man of education and promise from a daughter of the people.

The thought was a part of his intuitions rather than his consciousness; for in his simplicity he believed himself utterly unselfish in seeking her, and was at a loss to understand why she should have changed.

Neither the afternoon nor the evening brought any sign of Nicole, nor during the next day could he obtain more than one glimpse of her, as she departed toward the flower-market. Recovered from his exhaustion, he set forth on the following morning, piqued and angry, resolved to find her and force an explanation.

He searched the Palais Royal and the Tuileries without success, and it was only after luncheon that, passing down the left bank of the Seine, he found her near the Conciergerie.

She was a little apart from the throng, strolling meditatively by the river, into whose swift flood her look was plunged. The half-depleted basket, overrun with flowers, dangled from her arm, while in her fingers she was turning a cockade without purpose. Against the hot August foliage and the buildings weltering under the sun there was something about her inexpressibly cool and refreshing to the eye.

The meditative abandon of her pose suggested all at once to Barabant a reason for her absence, and with this pleasing thought his anger yielded to the zest of the eager and confident lover.

So serious was her reverie that she was unaware of his approach until his greeting startled her.

"Am I so terrible, Nicole," Barabant asked, smiling at her confusion, "that you find it necessary to avoid me?"

She rallied quickly, and simulating indecision, exclaimed:

"Why, it is the Citoyen Barabant!"

Barabant brought his brows together and said, with a return of his exasperation: "Nicole, why do you avoid me?"

She shook her head.

"I don't avoid you; I do not seek you out."

"Nicole, you are playing with me."

She again shook her head.

Barabant, taking her wrist, repeated the assertion.

"Barabant, I do not play with you," Nicole answered earnestly.

"Then why have you avoided me?"

He waited for her answer, but she said firmly: "I cannot tell you."

"Assuredly she is beginning to love me," thought Barabant, and, well content, did not press the question. They strayed a little from the Conciergerie, and leaning over the bank, contemplated the river scenes below, following the fortunes of the languid fishermen, the antics of a kitten that romped over the flat decks herded together, and the glistening backs of boys splashing near the shore.

"Of whom were you thinking so seriously before I came?" Barabant asked, secure in his new confidence. He sought her face, hoping to surprise some trace of confusion.

"I was wondering how it would seem to have a mother," Nicole answered. She crumbled a flower and scattered the petals on the wafting stir of the air before she turned. "But then we might not agree. Perhaps I am lucky. What do you think?"

"Such reverie for a mother?"

"Oh, there are moments when one has such moods."

"I had hoped you were thinking of me."

"Really?" She lifted her eyebrows slightly. "And why?"

Her composure routed his agreeable theories and plunged him into perplexities. So, abandoning his confident attitude, he exclaimed vehemently:

"Nicole, what has happened? What is there—a misunderstanding, or what? Surely you will not tell me that it is natural for you to shun me so persistently. I will be answered!"

"I don't; I don't. I will not have you saying that!" She seized the opportunity of a passing party of muscadins—the dandies of the day—to offer her cockades. On her return, Barabant said more quietly:

"Listen to me, Nicole. You misunderstand me; I do not upbraid you. I want to thank you. I owe you much, and you give me no opportunity to tell you of my gratitude. That is what vexes me. Voyons, Nicole, we had begun so well!" He leaned closer and said mischievously: "Oh, if I had known you would leave, I would have remained unconscious all the day. I've cursed myself ever since."

He laughed, and growing bolder as he perceived she listened without 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.