XV
LOVE, LIFE, AND DEATH
From above there came the shrill, rebellious cry of a woman. Below, in the court, the tenants were gathered, seeking refuge from the heat of the night. A few lights upon the sheer walls and the faint glow of the descended moon illuminated the dim groups: the men against the wall, the women clustered in the center. The cry was repeated, rising shriller. From the wall the exclamations arose:
"It isn't gay!"
"Sangdieu, two in a week! There's no peace left!"
"Eh, citoyen, if we're to fight all Europe, we must have soldiers!"
A peddler, a transient from la Mère Corniche's cellar, added in high tones:
"Thank God, just the same, we're men!"
The crones listened critically, without emotion, resuming their old wives' tales when the cry had ceased. Once a child, more keenly responsive to suffering, burst into a frightened whimper; but the mother, with an exclamation of impatience, sprang up and with a slap silenced the child, crying:
"Little brat, who told you to do that!"
Under the torch that lighted the entrance to the stairs the ghoulish figure of la Mère Corniche hobbled forth, returning from her inspection.
"Well, what news?" a voice cried.
"Eh, it'll be all night now," she answered peevishly. "I'm going to get some sleep."
The women, hearing this, broke up and departed to their rooms; the men began to grumble:
"What the devil's to be done?"
"I'm for the cabaret."
"You can't stay here."
"There's no sleep to-night. Come on to the cabaret."
"You'll join us, Citoyen Goursac?"
"No; I'm remaining here."
"And you, Citoyen Barabant?"
"I also."
"Morbleu, you've strange tastes!"
They shuffled away, leaving Barabant and Goursac, with their backs to the maple-tree, in possession of the empty darkness.
Presently lights began to splotch the walls, and at the windows appeared the silhouettes of feminine forms, while a running comment resounded:
"Where are the men?"
"Gone to the cabaret, probably."
"They are, if my man's among them."
"They're all weak-kneed."
"The cowards!"
The cry of the woman returned.
"Aïe, what lungs!"
"I yelled so, the police came up."
"You were right."
"Pardi!"
"Let's hope she'll give us some rest."
"Amen!"
The lights, one by one, flattened into the darkness. A single window, under the eaves, continued bright, from which ever descended the cry of battle.
"Does that affect you?" Goursac asked, following the momentary shadows across the panes.
"I don't like to hear it."
"You get accustomed to it, as to all things. Tiens! I was forgetting. I heard to-day that Dossonville had escaped."
"Absurd."
"They said he had been seen with Louison."
"But Nicole says she saw him cut to pieces."
"Then doubtless it was a mistake."
"No news of Javogues?" Barabant took up.
"None."
"That makes three days. You see, he's left the city."
"I doubt it." Goursac added after a moment: "I'll tell you something curious. You know Geneviève?"
"That child who lives with Nicole?"
"She's in love with him."
"What! that little ogre?"
"Eh, the ogre has the spark of the woman in her!" He jerked his head toward the lighted window. "Who's with her?"
"Nicole and Geneviève."
"Much good it'll do them."
"Hanh?"
"Good night. I'm going to philosophize! Are you staying?"
"Yes."
Scarcely had Goursac departed before the form of a young girl emerged from the stairs, and Nicole's voice said softly:
"Barabant, are you there?"
"Here I am."
He sprang eagerly to meet her, but Nicole, retreating before the decisive word, hastened to say:
"Poor girl, it is not going well. Geneviève is staying with her. Have you been waiting long?"
"I? No. I was talking with Goursac. He has just left." Barabant, determined to bring matters to an issue, added relentlessly, "I was just leaving for the cabaret."
"What! you were not waiting for me?"
"I could not count on your coming."
Nicole's eyes filled with tears, and, unable any longer to bear the unequal contest, she cried bitterly:
"Barabant, you are cruel!"
"I?" he answered, with a last effort. "I who have offered you everything? I whom you will not believe when I tell you I love you?"
"I do! I do!"
Barabant, no longer resisting her weakness, cried:
"But I adore thee, Nicole. I am out of my mind with love for thee!"
He seized her in his arms and kissed her on the cheeks, on the forehead, on the wet eyelids, with all the overpowering, reason-consuming flame of love.
She withdrew from his grasp, and looking him anxiously in the face, said:
"You thought me heartless and capricious, didn't you?"
"I have forgotten."
"But you did."
"Perhaps."
"Ah, Barabant, it was because I loved thee that I avoided thee."
"Why?"
His face expressed so much bewilderment that Nicole passed her hand gently over his eyes.
"No, that thou wilt never understand. If I could only tell thee how I love thee!" She wanted him to know the deep maternal longings that he had stirred within her, but all she found to say was, "I feared to love thee too much, and so I fought against myself." Then, with the first awakening of coquetry, she nestled on his shoulder and said confidently, "Forgive me."
"But why? Why?"
"It absorbed all that was in me, and I was afraid."
"Of what?"
She did not want to tell him of her doubts, so she said:
"Women have foolish ideas, Barabant; you must not try to understand them."
She joined her arms around his neck and laid her head upon his shoulder. Suddenly the silence was rent by the inexorable cry. In the heart of Nicole something penetrated like a knife. She began to tremble.
"Why do you shake so?" he asked.
"It is from joy."
"You love me so, then?"
When the silence returned, she said:
"Barabant, promise me but one thing."
"I promise it."
"When the day comes that you are leaving me for another woman, tell me first." She added low, as though she did not want him to hear: "I can kill myself without seeing her in his arms!"
Barabant, recoiling before such a picture of the future, cried from the bottom of a heart of pity:
"Never! Never!"
"No—I could not leave thee, even so," she said, weeping herself at the thought she had conjured. "Let me always be thy servant. I am only an ignorant girl, not fit to be thy companion. Let me take care of thee, though, whatever happens!"
"No, never that! Never! Nicole, it is for life, forever!" he cried with the sincerity of the moment, which is the sincerity of the lover. He was young, generous, quick to pity, and he adored her. "You do believe me?"
"Almost."
He redoubled his protestations, while Nicole, laughing through her tears, cried gaily:
"Go on, Barabant. It is good to hear. Don't stop—more, more!" At last she herself arrested his protestations: "Yes, Barabant, I believe thee. Oh, anything you can say to me I'll believe at this moment!"
"That I want thee while I live?"
"Yes."
"Forever?"
"For—ever." She drew herself up to his lips. "I have been so miserable waiting for thee."
Their lips met and they stood in the darkness as one body, while above, unheeded, from the darkness broke out the cry of life and death.
"Thou wilt not leave me, Nicole, again, neither now nor ever?"
"Do I not love thee?" she said simply.
They passed from the shadow and moved, tightly enlaced, through the dim region of the dwindling torch, slowly up the steep, hard steps into the enveloping darkness beyond. Again was lifted up the cry of anguish and rebellion, the cry of Prometheus, heritage of woman, and again came silence.
PART II
(One Year Later)
I
FAMINE
On the first day of September, 1793, Nicole left the Rue Maugout with the intention of visiting the Convention. Her step, that a year ago would have been confounded with the hum of life, now echoed down the quiet streets without interruption. Her eye, that once flashed so alertly through the curious crowd, passed with the indifference of habit down the deserted vista, and returned into the fixity of mental abstraction. The passers-by were rare; those who hung on the windows screened themselves. At a few doorways groups of emaciated children watched her progress, eyeing her basket with wolfish eyes. A year had brought but slight change in her. She still retained the bloom of youth, but her glance was more pensive. She was no longer gipsy or girl. A certain thoughtfulness had succeeded, elusive and arch, that told of the awakened imagination.
Twice on her way a band of police enveloping a prisoner passed, as passes a whirlwind over the stretches of the desert. Nicole gave them but a casual glance; such of the inhabitants as the familiar fall of feet brought to the windows retired indifferently, the prisoners themselves stoically adding their resignation to the monotony of the scene.
On the thoroughfares knots of Tapedures, the ruffians of the Terror, became frequent, stalking the town, beating the streets for their human game. Occasionally she met a bill-poster affixing the latest decree of the Republic—violent notes, in blue, violet, yellow, or red, that splashed the walls on every side. About the bakeries and butcher-shops knots of beggars were assembled, often reclining on the ground, watching with dreary, troubled glances those havens of food, ready to battle for a scrap of refuse.
A mother from a distant quarter, drifting from shop to shop, halted before such a group with a timid inquiry. From the loiterers, watching with confident indifference, a hag, extending her shriveled arm, shouted sarcastically:
"Welcome, citoyenne. You want something to eat? Take it; take it. We are so tired of eating meat in this section—nothing but beef and mutton and venison and pheasants here, morning and night. We get tired of that sort of thing in the end, you know. You were right to come here; see how well fed we are, how sleek! Don't believe him, his cellars are full of meat. It's rotting away. No one to eat it!"
From the fasting hags a rumble, rather than a laugh, went up. The woman who had covered perhaps half of Paris melted into a storm of sobs, beseeching a crust or a bone for the sake of her children. Then the hag, her raillery changing to anger, burst out:
"And we, have we no children? Are we not mothers, too? Hark to the woman: she thinks she's the only one to be pitied! Be off! Leave us in peace with your eternal wailings!"
At other times, women from the quarter itself, returning from a scouring of the markets, would awaken a sudden flame of interest.
"What luck?"
"What did you get?"
"Bread?"
"Meat?"
The scouts always denied success. Then a chorus arose:
"She's hiding it!"
"Show us your basket!"
"Eh, and under your dress!"
Once, in the Rue St. Honoré, a slip of a girl had almost freed herself of the questioning crowd, when a lean dog with a sharp nose bounded, sniffing, to her side. There was a quick turning in the crowd, and the nearest woman, leaping to her feet, shouted hysterically:
"I smell dried fish!"
The next moment, up the street a scuttling speck fled before a frenzied cloud from which shot out white arms and grasping hands.
Through such mad scenes of famine, Nicole arrived at the Hall of the Convention; where, being early, she entered the Tuileries to await the arrival of Barabant.
The gardens that once resounded with the hum of life, that once were gay with the swish of many colors, were now brown with the uninterrupted stretch of earth, rustling with the pervading sigh of leaves. Already in the trees, in the air, and in the tired soil was the melancholy of the parting season. Each breath that disturbed the branches, however slightly, set free a caravansary of fluttering leaves, and the leaves were sear.
She seated herself on a bench and abandoning the basket and clasping her knee, watched the whirling leaves heap themselves about her feet. One or two poised on her shoulder, in her hair, without her heeding them. Presently Goursac, also on his way to the Convention, joined her.
"This is the work of the cursed Montagne!" he said grimly, viewing the desolate gardens. "And yet Javogues is not satisfied. He would turn it into a cemetery!"
"Listen, my friend," she said earnestly. "If the Girondins fall, you will not stay to sacrifice your life to Javogues?"
"Do you think that I, a Girondin, would fly from that rascal!" he cried indignantly. "He works in the dark; he is incapable of striking in the open."
"And if the Girondins fall?" she persisted. But he refused to entertain the suggestion.
"This reminds me," he said, with a sweep of his arm, "of the time we were here a year ago. Do you remember?"
She nodded.
"Well," he said brusquely, "are you happy?"
"Yes."
"As happy as you thought?"
"No," she said slowly, "but it is my fault. The fault of my position, if you wish. I am jealous!"
"Of Louison?"
"No! Of what may happen."
"Why shouldn't he marry you?" he said angrily.
"Because I have not asked him," she answered wearily. "And because I would not have it."
"Why?"
"Because I love him, my friend," she said in rebuke. "And because a waif of the streets does not marry a man of education and position unless she wishes to drag him down."
Goursac, to her surprise, leaned over and patted her hand; then, as though ashamed to have shown such tenderness, he added gruffly:
"That is the only thing that can make you happy."
She did not deny it.
"I know what you have passed through."
She shook her head incredulously.
"It is but the history of womankind," he said laconically.
She took a leaf that had fallen on her hair and tore it slowly to shreds.
"Yes," he continued, warming to the subject, "you but resume in a year what woman has struggled for throughout the centuries. What is marriage but the instinct of self-preservation? Who imagined the bond? The weaker being, woman; and all the advances up the social scale have resulted from her silent striving toward equality with man. Without marriage you are a slave at the mercy of an angry word or a hostile mood; a slave who, in her search for security, must learn, without tears or show of fatigue, to render herself indispensable to the man."
Nicole rose abruptly, frowning, and with nervous fingers; but immediately she reseated herself with a forced laugh.
Presently, seeing that he had said more than he should have, he withdrew, leaving her immersed in the reverie his words had awakened.
Goursac had guessed truly. What womankind has endured, she had begun from the bottom. The instinct of self-preservation within her had awakened the immense intuitions that in the silent, enduring conflict of the sexes alike direct the wife, the mistress, and the outcast. She had studied Barabant, seeking the needs of his temperament, discovering his faults, and leading him to gradual dependence on her. Her imagination awoke. She saw the peril of mere domestic companionship. Where at first she had belittled the force of passionate love, she had come to realize its necessity and the need of constantly provoking his curiosity. She hid her thoughts from him, making of herself a mystery, employing that coquetry which, to the seeing eye, has at the bottom nothing but pathos. She had loved as a child. She had become an actress.
But in her heart of jealousy and doubt she knew well all her artifices could avail no longer than her youth. In marriage alone was peace and security. The daring of the thought frightened her. She knew it to be beyond her lot, nor in her devotion to Barabant would she have it so, but each day the dream returned, as from a pit one sees a star, or from a wreck the beacon on the forbidden shore.
Barabant found her lost in reverie, the leaves again unnoticed on her shoulders.
"The effect is pretty," he said, smiling down at her.
"On whom the leaves fall and rest, the earth will fall before the year is out," Nicole said. "That's the superstition."
"Nicole, I forbid you to say such things," he cried sharply. "They hurt me, and you know it!"
Satisfied with this evidence of his affection, she sprang up, brushing away the leaves, and saying with a smile:
"There, they have no power now."
"You are early."
"Yes; I was a little melancholy; I wanted to reflect. The gardens are delightful for that."
"I do not find them so."
"The mood is gone, now that you are here." She took his arm, smiling up into his face. They strolled through the alleys of chestnut and maple, Nicole drawing her skirt across her, placing her feet daintily, shaking her head in pretended anger as from time to time a leaf fluttered against her cheek.
"And the Girondins, mon ami? You have told me nothing of them."
"It grows worse and worse for them. The Jacobins are relentless."
"Don't identify yourself too much with them, then."
"But that is cowardice."
"No. If the Girondins fall, all the more will the Nation need the Moderates," Nicole answered anxiously, for her one dread was of his impulsive nature. "Why play into the hands of our enemies?"
Leaving the gardens, they entered the Place de la Revolution. The vast square that had swarmed with the multitude on the day of the execution of the king was devoid of movement, except where a few curious, wandering toward the emplacement of the absent guillotine, streaked like insects across the placid expanse.
Nearing the plaster statue of Liberty, Nicole was attracted by the lank figure of a man.
"Look over there," she said, drawing Barabant's attention. "Wouldn't you say that it was Dossonville?"
"There's a little resemblance."
"Much."
Barabant, who continued to study the figure, exclaimed:
"Really, the resemblance is striking!"
At this moment the man, turning, disclosed indeed the familiar features, while the well-known voice cried:
"Mordieu! It is Nicole and my little orator Barabant! Well, what's the matter? Touch hands!"
For Nicole, with a movement of superstition, had crossed herself, while Barabant, stock-still, remained staring stupidly at the apparition, until he was able to blurt out:
"What, it is you! Then you're not dead."
"Not even once!" he cried, slapping his hand emphatically across his chest. "I give you my word, it is not true! Come, feel of me. Is this the arm or the chest of a specter?"
"Still, I saw you," exclaimed Nicole, unable to reconcile the fact to her memory—"I saw you at the gate of the Abbaye—"
"My dear girl," Dossonville responded, with much good humor, "believe me, I am not dead; and, what's more, I never have been dead that I remember."
"But—"
"Mordieu, Nicole! are you determined to exterminate me?" Dossonville cried. "Let us reason. You saw me at the gate, but you didn't see me cut down, did you?"
"No."
"Then I reject your theory."
The three burst out laughing, until Dossonville suddenly exclaimed:
"But come, Louison must have told you."
"Louison!" echoed Barabant and Nicole, more and more amazed.
"Extraordinary woman! She can even keep a secret then!" Dossonville cried. "Why, it was Louison who found me in the crowd and piloted me to safety."
He recounted shortly the events of his escape, adding, as he extended his arm in a sweeping embrace of the horizon:
"And here I have lain concealed. I don't say where; the secret is too good. For ten months I lay like a rat. For the last two I have gone out only after midnight. To-day is the first trip into the blessed sun."
"Do you dare to risk it even now?" Barabant cried.
"Yes, now. Everything is arranged," he answered carelessly. "It was a little long coming, but it came."
But suddenly Nicole, remembering, exclaimed: "Barabant, you must warn him that Javogues is back."
"Back!" Dossonville repeated. "When did he leave?"
Barabant, in his turn, recounted the arrest and disappearance of the Marseillais, concluding:
"He reappeared with the rise of the Terrorists."
"Aïe, aïe!" Dossonville cried, having followed the recital with interest; "I cannot say that the situation is pleasant for the Citoyen Goursac."
A shadow passed over the brow of the young man, and he answered bitterly:
"I was a fool. We should have crushed the monster when we had him."
"There's good in him."
"What! You say it?"
"He wanted to cut my throat," Dossonville replied; "but that's nothing. He is sincere. It is true, from his point of view, there are not three men who should be alive in France to-day; but that is only a prejudice. I am keeping you; where are you bound?"
"To the Convention."
"Always a Girondin?"
"Well," Barabant answered doubtfully, "the Girondins had their chance, and they could not control the Convention."
"I say it's their own fault if they fall," Nicole interjected hastily.
"Nicole, you are right," Dossonville replied. "Moreover, they are about to lose their heads." He drew his finger across his neck. "In a political party, that's a grave failing."
"What, guillotine the Girondins!" Barabant exclaimed. "Guillotine Vergniaud, Brissot,—they would never dare!"
"Bah! you look upon it too seriously," Dossonville retorted. "What is the guillotine? Simply a vote of censure. But Louison—where can I find her?"
"At the Prêtre Pendu," Nicole answered. "You'll find her there about noon. That is, if there is no execution this afternoon."
"The Prêtre Pendu? Don't know it."
"It opened lately in the Rue Maugout, opposite No. 38."
"You call it—"
"The Prêtre Pendu."
"Charming!"
"I warn you, Javogues will be there."
"You are positive?"
"Absolutely."
"Good. Then I'll set out at once."
II
DOSSONVILLE EARNS A KISS
Dossonville, taking the river bank, proceeded with many inquiring halts, inhaling the air and sunshine in full breaths. He strolled into the halles, where the stalls, in state of siege, extended in long, deserted barracks; no buying, no selling, no provisions, only in the shadows the same clusters of limp basking beggars, slumbering with one ear alert.
As he languidly pursued his way, a door at his side was flung violently open and a man bearing on his back an enormous side of beef scurried across the place toward a butcher-shop, the door of which swung open to receive him. Instantly, with a hue and cry from every corner, there was a swift leaping of famished men, women, and children. Before Dossonville could leap aside he was caught in the rush, elbowed, buffeted, and thrown off his feet. When again he rose, the butcher was buried under a mound of ravenous humanity, thirty feet from his destination, while the square was obscured with the multitude that battled over the shreds of meat which came up from the bottom of the heap.
Hardly had he extricated himself from the tangle when, in the Place de la Bastille, a group of savage boys, pursuing a dog with a bone, swept by him, snatching at the fleeing animal, unmindful of its anger. One hand at last, more fortunate than the others, closed over the brute, and the human children tore the bone from the beast. Pursuing now a haggard boy, they returned in a cloud, panting, with famine-inflamed eyes, while the lean, infuriated brute at their heels struck with angry jaws into the pack.
Beset on every side by troops of children too weak to extend their hands, Dossonville arrived at the Rue Maugout, readily recognizing the Cabaret of the Prêtre Pendu by its figure of a priest, which, swinging from a miniature gibbet, advertised the republican principles of the host.
Seeing no one before the entrance of No. 38, he penetrated into the inner room of the cabaret, where, the two or three groups occupied with cards being unknown to him, he exchanged salutations with the hostess, asking genially:
"Your husband, citoyenne, I hope, is frying me a bit of steak?"
"My man's with the army."
"A patriot, then."
"And there's no meat."
"An omelet will do."
"No eggs, no fish, no vegetables."
"Diable! that leaves nothing but bread and cheese."
"No bread, no cheese!"
"Mordieu, what am I going to lunch on?"
"Soup."
"Ah!" Dossonville nodded, with understanding. "True! As long as the material world exists, soup is possible. Well, soup be it, citoyenne, soon and hot."
He passed curiously to the card-players, for his ear had caught such strange expressions as these:
"I play the Liberty of Marriage."
"I the Genius of Peace."
"The Equality of Rank."
"Liberty of the Press."
"Taken by the Genius of Arts."
Dossonville, much perplexed, moved to a survey of the pack. He found the Monarchs indeed dethroned; the Kings succeeded by the Geniuses of War, Commerce, Peace, and the Arts; the Queens replaced by the Liberties of Faith, Professions, Marriage, and the Press. The Knaves themselves, as though suspected of royalistic tendencies, had yielded to the Equalities of Duties, Color, Rights, and Rank.
"The sentiment is perfect," he murmured to himself, "perfect, but perplexing."
The hostess appearing with a capacious bowl, he returned to his corner, where he contemplated the soup with that respect and curiosity which a Parisian gives to a dish of which he has not had the making. He stirred it doubtfully, and at the first taste drew a long face.
"Tonnerre de Dieu! They've put the aristocrats in the soup," he grumbled. "However, being good patriots, we must eat it."
He was bending over the bowl, when a shadow darkened the open doorway, and with the fragrant scent of flowers came the voice of Louison, chanting:
"Cockades, patriots; cockades, my Sans-Culottes. The last ones I have been able to save for you."
She passed among them, calling to them by name, tapping them on the shoulders, but receiving nothing but banter.
"Are they good to eat—your cockades?"
"As a salad, nothing is better." Taking up the idea, she repeated laughingly: "Buy my salads, citoyens; buy my patriotic salads!"
Wishing to enjoy her surprise, Dossonville kept silent, leaning forward, his chin in his palm, smiling expectantly. Thus Louison discovered him. The very slightest look of astonishment passed over her face, a fugitive amazement that she immediately controlled.
"Louison, you are discretion itself," Dossonville said approvingly, his smile extending to a grin as he stretched forth his hand. "If ever the Revolution places women in power (and what is impossible to-day?), I'll recommend you for Minister of Foreign Affairs."
"Citoyen, citoyen, you are mad to enter this place," Louison cried. "Do you not know that this is the headquarters of Javogues?"
"I know it; but see you, Louison, that animal is so stupid."
Divining that despite his careless manner he was fortified against the encounter, she relaxed and said more calmly:
"Really, I didn't expect that you'd escape."
"My dear Louison, it is not so difficult."
"In these days it is."
"A man has as many lives as a cat," he said ironically. "It is the imagination that is lacking."
As though to put this theory to the test, a voice jarred upon the stillness, crying:
"Where is the spy?"
The next instant the cabaret was thrown into turmoil as Javogues, at the head of three or four companions, rushed in.
"Good day, citoyen," Dossonville's cool voice was heard saying above the uproar, "and how goes it with you since we parted last?"
Guided by his voice, Javogues precipitated himself toward his enemy, but as his hand shot forth it stopped in mid-air, and he fell back in astonishment.
Dossonville, never losing his poise, with an imperceptible movement of his hand had rolled back the lapel of his redingote, disclosing on his breast the shield of an agent de sûreté.
"Impossible!" Javogues exclaimed, recoiling. "You an agent de sûreté! It's a counterfeit!"
Dossonville checked the second rush as coolly as the first. His hand went into his breast pocket and withdrew a document, which he tendered to Javogues on the tips of his fingers, saying:
"Read, and grow wise."
The Marseillais passed it to a companion, who shook his head and passed it to a third, who read in a piping voice:
Office of the Committee of Safety
The Citoyen Santerre having appeared before us and established the alibi of the Citoyen Dossonville on the day of the Tenth of August, we declare the Citoyen Dossonville innocent of all suspicion. Furthermore, as it appears he refused to disclose the nature of the secret mission, in the interests of the Nation, on which he was engaged, even at the risk of his life, we declare the Citoyen Dossonville a patriot who deserves the gratitude of his country.
We further appoint the said Citoyen Dossonville agent de sûreté, with the following powers—
"The rest is quite technical," Dossonville interrupted. He turned to Javogues, who, thus robbed of his dearest vengeance, remained transfixed with stupor. "You see, Citoyen Javogues, you cannot always tell a traitor by the look in his eyes."
Stung by the taunt, Javogues advanced furiously:
"It's a lie," he cried. "It's another of his tricks. The paper is a forgery." Then turning to his companions, he shouted: "Don't let him out of your sight until I return!"
Dossonville, erect and solemn, checked him sternly:
"Enough! Enough, citoyen, do you hear? What you have done I forgive—but go no further! An act such as you contemplate is a defiance of the Nation. I represent the Nation. Citoyen Javogues, I warn you, at the next attack you make against me I'll have you on the scaffold within twenty-four hours."
Javogues, impressed despite himself, found no encouragement in the faces of his comrades. He turned on his heel and went dejectedly toward the door. There he wheeled, and shaking his fist, cried:
"Dossonville, if I am not to hate you, arrest me, guillotine me at once. For, as long as I live, it is war between you and me! If you want me, you'll find me here, at five."
Dossonville remained a moment pensive and erect.
"Mordieu!" he exclaimed at last, "the fellow is genuine. Devil take me if I can help liking him." Then turning to Louison, who had followed him with fascinated eyes, he said: "As for you, ma belle, I owe you everything. To begin with, I swear an eternal love."
And, taking her in his arms, he kissed her on the cheek, and then sat down.
In a moment the room was swept of its terrified guests, while the proprietress, disappearing through a back door, left the memory of a red stocking.
Louison, at the familiarity, recoiled, while anger like a blast from an oven inflamed her face. Her hand stole to her bosom, and with a sudden movement she hid a knife behind her. Dossonville, feigning ignorance, appeared engrossed in the selection of a cockade from the abandoned basket. But as the girl in her passion leaped at him, he sprang aside, whipped out his sword, and flung himself behind a table.
Then, those without, flattening their noses against the window or peering through the doorway, beheld a furious combat between them; the man, always cool and alert, checking the rushes of the girl with the point of his sword, turning, retreating, or advancing as his assailant, with the rapidity of a bird, flew from point to point, darting, feinting, or striking for an opening. Meanwhile above the scuffle and the patter of feet the voice of Dossonville rose imperturbably in running comment:
"Hoop-là, parried! A little more to the left and you had me. Mordieu, who'd have thought a pretty woman would resent a kiss? Such a fraternal kiss, too, so full of gratitude! Perhaps that's the trouble; you never can tell with a woman. What now?"
Bounding on the table, the girl without a pause leaped full at him.
"Bravo! That's a jump for you. What a woman! Louison, you are splendid. Dame, what fury! À toi!"
Hard pressed with the recklessness of her attacks, he threatened her throat so closely that, with the slightest stiffening of his arm, he would have run her through.
"A life for a life! there's gratitude for you!"
From outside they cried to him offers of help.
"Never; any man that interferes, I'll shoot down. This little affair is between us,—eh, Louison? What now?"
He sprang away, barely avoiding a chair hurled to break down his guard.
"That was well imagined. Mille diables, what a woman—and not a sound! Louison, I adore you already. Louison, my dear, do you believe in another life? If you would only guarantee me another, I'd give you this out of courtesy,—only then I couldn't adore you. What energy! If you are getting tired, Louison, rest a while."
But her answer was to fling herself again at him, seeking to come inside his guard by stooping suddenly to one side, grasping at his blade with her free hand. Dossonville, forced to meet the fury of the onslaught, a second time presented the point of his blade to her throat; but this time, so impetuous was her rush that only the instant withdrawal of the weapon saved her.
"A second time, Louison, I spare you. My gratitude, you see, is eternal. Louison, you fight too recklessly, you expose yourself. You rely too much on my sense of gratitude. Hoop-là! Again I had you! If it's only a matter of a kiss that stands between us, you might give it back to me. Ha, ha! Well struck, Louison! Where will it end? My gratitude restrains me, and you must realize what a good fellow you are trying to end—"
Suddenly, to the astonishment of all, Dossonville included, Louison halted, panting and heaving, restored the knife to her bosom, and burst out laughing.
"Dossonville," she cried, flinging out her hand in acclamation, "you're a man!"
He dropped on both knees, exclaiming: "That word disarms me. Do me the favor of cutting my neck."
With a movement as swift as her attack, the girl passed to his side, and, bending suddenly, kissed him on the forehead.
"That one, Dossonville," she cried, "you have deserved."
And with a laugh, she flitted into the street, where the spectators, respecting her sudden whims, prudently left her an open passage.
III
WAITING FOR BREAD
In this season of famine, when the supply of bread barely sufficed to feed one half of the population, by six o'clock in the evening long lines began to form in front of the bakeries, to await through the long night the morning distribution of loaves. Javogues, who took the occasion of this assembling to study the crowd for signs of traitors or faint-hearted republicans, returned each evening, toward five o'clock, to the Prêtre Pendu in a gale of patriotic ferocity.
But this afternoon, to the astonishment of those who were accustomed to quail before his glance, his lagging step, his knotted club trailing at his heels, and his head relaxed on his shoulders gave every appearance of dejection. At the Prêtre Pendu he sank gratefully into a chair, covered the table with his arms, and plunged moodily into his thoughts.
Presently, arm in arm, bristling with weapons, in villainous shoes wound about with strips of rags, appeared three Tapedures,—Cramoisin the mountebank, Boudgoust the waiter, and Jambony the crier,—thrown together by the strange tides of the Terror. In the middle, Boudgoust strode with hang-dog head, as though his height had overshot his strength. The shriveled, furtive mountebank clung to one arm, while at the other waddled the bloated, leering cub of the gutters. So tightly huddled were they that they seemed one unclean body with three heads—an incongruous union of malignant age, stultified manhood, and vicious, insolent youth.
Perceiving Javogues silent and absorbed, they slackened their pace, and Boudgoust said cautiously:
"Cramoisin, he's still in bad humor."
"It's that cursed Dossonville, my little Boudgoust. If it worries him, why doesn't he get rid of him?"
"Javogues's the devil when aroused," Boudgoust continued apprehensively. He turned to the boy: "Jambony, throttle that voice of a carriage-crier and speak softly. It might be best to slip away."
But Javogues, lifting his head, beckoned them.
"Well, watch-dogs, what luck?"
Cramoisin and Jambony looked to Boudgoust, who turned his pockets inside out, showed the flat of his palms, and answered:
"Nothing."
"An unfortunate day—for all of us," Javogues said gloomily, and relapsed into bitter reflections on his encounter with Dossonville.
"What luck!" exclaimed Cramoisin. "We escaped easily. Suppose we eat something."
Jambony opened his mouth, and the voice, trained to rise above the jargon of the street, resounded from one end of the street to the other.
"Food!"
The invariable bowl of soup and a bottle of thin wine were placed in front of each. Boudgoust, whose appetite was in proportion to his length, accomplished his portion in one swallow, and being thus reduced to philosophizing, exclaimed:
"All citoyens should be made to eat together."
"Nothing new there," Cramoisin interjected querulously. "We have the Fraternal dinners, haven't we?"
"That amounts to nothing," Boudgoust retorted. He leaned his elbows on the table, scratching the back of his hands as he talked: "But every day, every meal. That's democracy! Or, better, no citoyen to eat more than another! If I saw any one eating meat to-night I'd arrest him. All citoyens should share alike."
Jambony, having now emptied his bowl, declared in his stentor's voice:
"And I am for equality of dress. No distinction between citoyens on account of dress! A national costume—one for the men and one for the women!"
Presently, while he launched into the details of his scheme, a raven, with a croak and a flap of its wings, hopped from the gloom of the opposite entrance, followed by the diminutive figure of la Mère Corniche, who, giving a nod of understanding to the four, installed herself on a stool and began to knit.
"There's one who's no Girondin," Boudgoust grunted.
"She's a tiger since the death of Marat," Jambony remarked in a thundering whisper. "She was very devoted. They say—"
And he proceeded to detail one of those fantastic tales which the Parisian playfully attributed to any woman, were she eighty or eighteen.
Cramoisin, having caressed the last drop in his bowl, now exclaimed:
"Jambony, you are tiresome, you and your national costume. You go half-way. What we must restore is the primeval innocence!" As he spoke he pressed a flat thumb on the table, while from under his eyebrows shot the shrewd dagger glances of the madman. "The primeval innocence—there only is the truth! Nothing but that can restore republican simplicity. No clothes at all! A return to the simplicity of Adam and Eve—the true, the real republicans! There's something that would be sublime!"
"Allons, Cramoisin, you have too much vanity!" Boudgoust replied.
"Yes, he wants to display his beauty," put in Jambony, who retained the spirit of raillery gathered at the doors of the theater. "We know that trick, old fellow."
Cramoisin was beginning a furious answer when Javogues, turning impatiently, demanded the hour.
"Close to seven."
"They come later every night," Javogues grumbled. He rang the table with his fist. "Perhaps they think they can hide their guilty faces in the dusk!"
Presently, from the entrances, people with baskets began to appear, directing their way toward the Bakery Gobin, a rod below, to take up the vigil that consumed the night.
Those who passed the Prêtre Pendu waited anxiously their welcome from the mouth of Javogues, whose salutations varied according to his estimate of their patriotism.
"Greetings, patriots."
"Greetings, citoyens."
"Greetings."
To some he simply nodded in return. Occasionally he stiffened and, without recognition, fastened his scrutiny on the eyes of a new arrival, as though to tear away the mask and wrench forth the secret.
Marching purposely toward them, looking Javogues disdainfully in countenance, came Goursac. So implacable were the glances the two enemies exchanged that they seemed to clash midway in the air. Arrived within ten feet of the group, Goursac turned curtly on his heel and departed toward the bakery without having recognized them by word or nod. The Tapedures cursed; Javogues, following him with his glance, muttered:
"Sacré! Girondin, wait a little longer!"
Several women passed, among them Nicole, who received a friendly greeting from Javogues, Boudgoust commenting:
"Fine woman that, Cramoisin, for all you say!"
Cramoisin scowled for an answer, following the girl with a glance of implacable hatred.
"Eh, yes," Jambony added, sinking his voice. "As for me, if it weren't for Javogues I'd not keep her long chained up to that cursed Barabant."
"Barabant," growled Boudgoust, "is an indulgent. He is forever talking of mercy."
"He who speaks of mercy in these days," cried Cramoisin, purposely raising his voice, "is in league with aristocrats. He should be denounced."
Javogues turned angrily:
"Enough! Barabant is a patriot. I know it!"
Boudgoust, who disliked quarrels, interrupted:
"Hello, who's this brat?"
A girl of six or seven was approaching, carrying in her arms a stool.
Javogues, at once suspicious, stopped her.
"Who sent you out, my little one?"
"Papa."
"And who is your father?"
"The wig-maker there," she said, showing the shop with her small finger. "He's coming to take my place later."
"Ah, your papa is a good Royalist."
The child, frightened by his looks, remained twisting from side to side, while Javogues, softening his voice, repeated the question.
The child shook her head.
"What does he say of us?" It was Boudgoust who put the question.
"Don't know."
"But he suffers much with this famine, doesn't he?" suggested Cramoisin, slyly.
"Oh, yes," she answered, the innocent face brightening. "Papa says we suffer more now than before."
Cramoisin, triumphant and smiling, drew back; the child toddled on.
"Ah, Citoyen Flaquet," Javogues cried in triumph, "who doesn't dare pass us in the daylight and who regrets the royalty, we hold you at last!"
Among the next to leave No. 38 was a girl of sixteen, who, in greeting Javogues, faltered a little in her walk. It was Geneviève, suddenly blossomed into a woman. Her eyes, that formerly were too black and large on her sallow face, were now in fair relief to her cheeks, that had flushed with the glow of womanhood. She moved lightly, and even the carelessness of her dress could not conceal the full figure, erect and flexible. The four men watched her pass on and take her place in the lengthening line.
"The best of the lot!" Cramoisin said.
"She was ugly enough last year," Boudgoust replied.
"She was not a woman then," retorted the other, who seized the opportunity to broach his favorite theory. "Women, they're good enough in their places. They're put here to give men to the world. I believe in the community of women. No marriage. Women discriminate according to a man's being old or ugly or poor. All discrimination is unrepublican. There should be no distinctions."
"Yes, my old fellow, but halt there," Jambony said impudently. "No community of men."
"Why not?"
"You'd fall to the lot of la Mère Corniche."
Cramoisin angrily resented the interruption. He passed to the sociological aspect of the reform, and declared that with the Nation battling against all Europe such a measure was needed to fill in the gaps of war. Other bottles were brought and torches.
Below at the bakery, two torches disclosed the undulations of the monstrous queue, but the faces and the outlines of the figures were confounded in the night. Sometimes a brief song would mount up, a few whispered communications could be heard, and the steady snoring of a sleeper.
From there, in the narrow circle of light under the figure of the priest, which swung in grotesque outlines, the four Tapedures could be seen, drinking and discussing. At times their voices, impassioned and drunken, reached the line, the high pitch of Cramoisin crying: "Primeval innocence! community of women!" or the bellow of Javogues, "There is no God!" as the four, without listening to one another, debated furiously their sublime ideas.
From time to time others arrived through the darkness, relieving those in line. Toward midnight Barabant replaced Nicole. Several of the new arrivals were fresh from cabarets; many of those whom no one relieved began in drunken boisterousness to scream upon the night ribald songs and jests, foul anathemas of the party in disfavor.
The noise of kisses and tipsy laughter became frequent. The women and children, accustomed to the scene, retired under shawls and sought to efface themselves against the chilly walls. Some women, more vicious than their mates, joined in the drunken carnival, which toward three o'clock, when the torches dropped back into the night, knew no bounds. And all the while, amid this licentiousness, muffled or in brazen outcry, the line asleep or cringing, whispering or ribald, waited stolidly for the dawn.
Shortly after three, Javogues and his body-guard quitted the cabaret to make the rounds. A single torch held aloft by Boudgoust lit up the huddled queue. They passed down the line, Jambony and Cramoisin embracing the women, Javogues compelling all to cry "Vive la Nation!" and "A bas les Indulgents!" As luck would have it, Cramoisin perceived the face of Geneviève, which, in her curiosity, she momentarily displayed.
The drunkard flung himself forward and seized her in his arms. She defended herself furiously, averting her face, resisting all his efforts to drag her into the street; until Cramoisin, getting his arm around her waist, wrenched her forth screaming in her terror:
"Citoyen Javogues, Citoyen Javogues, protect me! Don't let him take me, Citoyen Javogues!"
Javogues, recognizing the voice, ran up.
"Who've you got there?"
"Don't you see I've got a woman?" Cramoisin said surlily. He added an obscenity that caused the girl, in despair, to exclaim:
"Oh, Citoyen Javogues, save me, save me!"
"None of that," Javogues cried angrily. "Let her go."
As the drunken Cramoisin started to protest, with a blow of his fist he knocked him down. Geneviève, carried down in the fall, flung herself at the feet of Javogues, grasping his knees.
"Thanks, thanks," she cried hysterically. "Citoyen, you are good, you are kind!"
Then fearing to become too prominent, she hurried to her place, enveloping her head with a shawl and crouching back into the friendly obscurity.
Cramoisin, whimpering, disappeared; Javogues, Boudgoust, and Jambony reeled away. Fatigue stilled even the noisiest. The night was achieved in sleep.
Toward six the line roused itself, as two inspectors of the municipality arrived to preside over the distribution of the bread. The doors were opened and the frantic rush began, those in the rear crowding forward with frenzied inquiries, which changed into the familiar shrieks of despair when the doors were closed with a third of the line unserved.
Geneviève, who had received her maximum of bread among the last, avoided the outstretched hands of the unsuccessful and escaped up the street, to where la Mère Corniche, at her post, exacted a tithe from each lodger. Dropping her tribute in the basket, she was hastening on when the concierge retained her with the cry:
"The Citoyen Javogues wants you."
Thinking that it was to fetch water from the Seine, the girl sought her bucket and hastened to the room of the Marseillais. At the sight of the bucket, Javogues frowned and asked:
"What are you doing with that?"
"Don't you want me to fetch water?"
"No."
"Ah."
"Leave the bucket in the corner."
Geneviève obeyed. Javogues shut the door, returned, and frowned again as he saw that she was trembling.
"What is the matter?" he said roughly. "Why do you tremble?"
She shook her head.
"Are you afraid of me?" he said, advancing.
"Oh, no."
"Then what is it?"
"I'm glad—that's all."
"True?"
All at once the girl, flinging herself at his feet, caught his hands and cried:
"I love you, I love you, I love you!"
"What, me!" Javogues cried, amazed, retreating a step. "You love me!"
"I adore you. I think of nothing but you. You are my god!"
"There is no God!"
"Yes, when one loves."
"Then you love me—it's true?" he said, raising her to her feet. "Why do you love me?"
"Why?" She drew a long breath. "You are so big, so heroic!"
Javogues fell back into a chair, repeating:
"Extraordinary! I don't understand."
She threw herself into his arms with the movement of a child, and, without seeking to conceal her thoughts, repeated a hundred caresses while he continued to mumble stupidly:
"Extraordinary! Extraordinary!"
Finally her emotion penetrated him. He took her in his hands and held her from him, she coloring with pleasure at this show of force, which came to her as a caress.
Suddenly a tremor ran through his immense body, an upheaval out of which came something gentle and softened. He continued to hold her before him, without shifting the glance that plunged into her eyes, while the girl, turning in his grasp, repeated, "Let me go!" for, child that she was, she divined what was passing in him.
"But why," he repeated stupidly—"why do you love me? I don't understand. No other woman ever has."
"Because you are so heroic. All the others understand nothing of poverty and sorrow. You—you understand. You give hope to such as I. When I hear you speak those sublime thoughts, my heart swells. You too have suffered; you know the abyss." She added, not without elation: "I loved you from the first day. I never thought you'd notice me."
"It's true—really true, then—what you say to me?"
For all answer she looked at him and smiled.
"It's curious. I don't understand it," he said at last. "But I believe I'm beginning to love you."
Then, without quite knowing why, she lowered her eyes.