Chapter Sixteen.
“Vive La Guillotine!”
It was midnight when I got clear of the Auberge ”à l’Irlandois” in the Rue d’Agnès, and being a fine, warm autumn night I was by no means the only occupant of the street. This was fortunate for me, for the guards posted at either end would have been more inquisitive as to a solitary stranger than one of a company of noisy idlers.
That night there had been a great performance in one of the theatres in Paris, which had lasted far into the night, and was only lately over. Those I overheard speak of it said it had been a great patriotic spectacle, in the course of which National Guards and cadets had marched across the stage, unfurling the banner of the Republic, and taking the oath of the people amid scenes of wild enthusiasm and shouting. To add to the enthusiasm of the occasion a party of real volunteers had appeared, and after receiving the three-coloured cockade from their sweethearts, had shouldered their guns and marched, singing the Marseillaise, straight from the theatre to the road for La Vendue, where they were going to shed their blood for their country.
The audience had risen, waving hats and handkerchiefs to bid them God-speed, and then poured forth into the streets, shouting the chorus, and cheering till they were hoarse and tired.
It was into a party of such loyal revellers that I found myself sucked before I was half-way out of the Rue d’Agnès; and yelling and shouting at the top of my voice I passed safely the guards, and reached the broad Rue Saint Honoré. Here the crowd gradually dispersed, some one way, some another, while a few, with cries of “A la Place,” held on in company. With these I joined myself, and presently came to a great open square, where on a high platform stood a grim and terrible looking object. “Vive la guillotine!” shouted the crowd as they caught sight of it.
It was strangely lit up with the glare of the torches of some workmen who were evidently busy upon it. I could see the fatal knife being raised once or twice and let fall with a crash by way of experiment. And each time the crowd cheered and laughed, and invited one of their number to ascend the platform and put his head in the empty collar. It made me sick to watch it, yet for safety’s sake I had to shout “Vive la guillotine!” with the rest of them, and laugh with the loudest.
Presently some one near noticed me and caught me by the arm.
“Here is one that will do, Citoyen Samson. Lift him up, comrades. Let us see if the knife is sharp enough.”
At the touch of his hand I broke into a cold sweat, and clung to his knees amid shouts of laughter. It was all very well for them, who were used to such jests. I was new to it, and fell a victim to a panic such as I have never known since. A herculean strength seemed to possess me. I flung my tormentors right and left, and darted away from them into the dark recesses of the surrounding gardens. They began by giving chase, but in the end let me go, and returned to their more congenial spectacle, and presently, tired even of that, went home to bed.
It was an hour before I durst look out from my hiding-place in the midst of a clump of thick bushes. I could still see the guillotine looming in the moonlight; but the workmen, like the sightseers, had gone. The only living persons were a few women, who had seated themselves on one of the benches in front of the instrument, evidently determined on a good view of to-morrow’s spectacle.
I retreated to my hiding-place with a shudder, glad I was too far away to overhear their talk.
But if I heard not theirs, I heard, oddly enough, another conversation, so near that had it been intended for my ears it could not have taken place in a better spot.
One of the speakers, by his voice, was an Englishman, of more than middle age; the other, a woman, who also spoke English, but with a foreign accent.
This is what I heard, and you may guess how much of it I comprehended:—
“No news yet?” said the old man anxiously.
“None. I expected to hear before this.”
“Who is the messenger?”
“A trusty servant of madame’s, and an Irishman.”
“So much the worse if he is caught.”
There was a pause. Then the old man inquired,—
“What hope is there for Sillery?”
“Absolutely none. He is as good as guillotined already.”
“Has Edward no influence then?”
“Not now. Duport is no longer a man, but a machine—deadly, mysterious, as yonder guillotine. He would denounce me, his wife, if the Republic demanded it.”
“God forbid! for you are our last friend.”
Then there was another pause, and the man spoke again. He was evidently broken-down by terror, and engrossed in his own safety.
“My fear now is,” he said, “that, if Sillery is doomed, the messenger should deliver Edward’s letter to Duport at all. It will only make matters worse for us.”
“Very true. It is no time for appeals to mercy,” said Madame Duport. “But you said you expected a letter for yourself.”
“Ay; money to escape with. That’s all I live for.”
“Money from Edward?”
“No. From my kinswoman, Alice Gorman.—Hush! what was that?” he cried, breaking into a whisper.
“Only a falling leaf.—How was she to reach you?”
“She was to send it to Edward, and he would forward it by the same messenger that carried his letter to Duport.”
“Pray Heaven that be lost too,” said the lady. “You are safer in Paris. Besides, money without a passport will avail nothing.”
The old man gave a bitter laugh.
“They all desert me,” said he querulously. “My nephew never shows sign; Sillery is to perish, you fear to speak to me; even my poor wife chides me.”
“Surely Madame Lestrange—”
Here I started again, and slight as was the sound it broke up the conference. They separated, one in either direction, the lady gliding towards the benches in front of the guillotine, the old man (whom I now knew to be Mr Lestrange) creeping under the shadow of the trees, and presently lying at full length on a seat apparently fast asleep.
I curled myself up on a seat not far off, where I could watch him without being seen by him. A little before dawn he got up, and after carefully looking up and down the road, walked hurriedly back towards the Place de la Revolution, where he lost himself among the now increasing groups who mustered in the grey light for an early seat at the spectacle of the hour.
I dropped into a seat not far off, and in the distance, among a row of pale, hard, fatigued faces, I could see the deputy’s wife, who never looked our way, but sat with her eyes fixed on the dreadful machine.
The old man looked across at her once and again, and then tried nervously to join in the general talk, and nod assent to the loyal sentiments of those who crowded near.
As for me, I was too sick even to keep up appearances, and was thankful when one rough interloper shouldered me from my place and sent me sprawling down among the feet of the onlookers.
“Shame! Let the young citoyen have a view,” called some one.
“We are all equal,” said the usurper. “Let him take the place from me, and he may have it.”
I declined the challenge, and slunk off at the back of the crowd, which was all too busy and expectant to heed whether I got a view or not.
What I heard that morning was bad enough. There was the sound of the drums and the dull rumble of wheels, drowned by yells and shouts from the men and screams from the women; then a silence, when no one stirred, but every neck was craned forward to see; then a sudden tap of the drum; then the harsh crash of the knife; then a gasp from a thousand throats, and a great yell of “Vive la Liberté.” Three times I heard it all. Then the spectacle was at an end, and the crowd dispersed.
I kept a keen look-out among the groups that straggled past me for the bent figure of Mr Lestrange, but no sign of him could I see. After all, thought I, this errand of mine to Paris was to be all for nothing, when close by I perceived Citoyenne Duport walking aloof from the crowd and bending her steps towards the gardens. I resolved, cost what it might, not to lose sight of her, and followed her at a distance till the paths were quite deserted.
Then I quickened my steps and came up with her.
“Madame Duport,” said I boldly, “I am the messenger you and Mr Lestrange expect.”
She looked round at me with blanched face, and held up her hand with a gesture of silence.
“No, no,” said she, “I am not Madame Duport. You mistake, my friend.”
“Madame need not fear me; I am no mouchard. I overheard all you and Mr Lestrange said last night. Here is the letter I bear to Deputé Duport. Either I must deliver it myself or ask madame to do so.”
She held out her hand for it.
“We are at your mercy,” said she. “Is this from Lord Edward himself?”
“I know nothing of it, madame,” said I, and recounted the story of how I had come by the missive in the wood near Morlaix.
She sighed, and said,—
“John Cassidy is happier where he lies than we are. Is this your only missive?”
“No; I have a letter for Mr Lestrange, and beg you to tell me his address.”
At that moment she looked round, and gave a little scream as first a footstep, then a voice, fell on her ear.
“Adèle,” said a lean, bilious-looking man, with a hard, pinched face and knit lips, approaching from one of the side-walks—“Adèle, what do you here?”
“My husband,” said the lady, so far recovering her composure as to smile and advance to meet him, “you are come in a good moment. This lad bears a missive for you, and, having discovered me in the crowd, was begging me to deliver it for him. Here it is.”
Duport took the letter with a frigid glance at me as if to say he believed not a word of the story, and mechanically tore it open.
I watched his eyebrows give a sudden twitch as he read the contents.
“Who gave you this?” demanded he.
I repeated my story, which once more he received with an incredulous stare.
Then turning to his wife he said, half to himself, half to her,—
“From Edward Fitzgerald on behalf of his kinsman, Sillery. But too late. Come, Adèle. The twenty-two are before the Tribunal to-day, and I have a place for you in the gallery.”
And without heeding me further (for which I was devoutly thankful), he drew his wife’s arm in his own and walked off rapidly in the direction of the Tuileries.
Lest my reader should suppose that my letter to Deputé Duport was one of great moment to my own story, let me say at once it was not so, at least directly. It was, as the deputy had said, a letter addressed by Lord Edward Fitzgerald, a young Irish nobleman (of whom more hereafter), to Duport, claiming, for the sake of old comradeship, his good offices on behalf of one of the twenty-two impeached Girondist deputies, Sillery by name, whose adopted daughter, or, rather, the adopted daughter of whose wife, Lord Edward had lately married. Many letters of the kind were no doubt constantly coming into the hands of powerful members of the Convention just then; and many, like it, came too late.
Next morning, so I was told, the whole of the accused, and Sillery first of the batch, were guillotined; the headsman doing his work with such dexterity that in thirty-one minutes the twenty-two were all disposed of.
My letter to Mr Lestrange (which I still carried in my stocking) was another matter, and concerned me considerably, especially now that I understood it was from my lady at Knockowen. Where to find him I knew not, and to be found with the letter on me might compromise not merely me but him and his Irish kinsfolk.
All things considered, I decided to read the letter and commit it to memory, and then destroy it, hoping my good intentions might be excuse enough for the breach of faith. And, indeed, when that afternoon I sought a sheltered place in the woods and produced the soiled and stained letter from my stocking, I was glad I had done what I did.
“Dear Cousin,” wrote my lady at Knockowen, “I hear there is a chance of getting a letter to you by the messenger who is to carry back Lord Edward’s petition on behalf of the poor Marquis Sillery. Your nephew, Captain Lestrange, told us of his trouble when he was here in the summer, and gave us to understand there was little to be hoped for. If Sillery perish, your position in Paris will be painful indeed. I would fain send you the money you ask for, but Maurice keeps me so low in funds that I cannot even pay for my own clothes. I trust, however, your nephew may bring you some relief, as he spoke of going to Paris this autumn on a secret mission for the English Government. Affairs with us are very bad, and, indeed, Maurice succeeds so ill in winning the confidence of either party, loyalist or rebel, that he talks of sending me and Kit over to you till times are better here. Take the threat for what it is worth, for I should be as sorry as you would, and I hear Paris is a dreadful place to be in now. But you know Maurice. Kit is well, but all our troubles prey on her spirits. I suspect if your nephew were in Paris, she would be easier reconciled to our threatened pilgrimage than I. Between ourselves, my dear cousin, as Maurice now holds all the mortgages for your Irish estates, it would be well to keep in with him, even if the price be a visit from your affectionate cousin,—
“Alice Gorman.”
“P.S.—I forget if you are still in the Quai Necker, but am told Lord Edward’s messenger will know where to deliver this.”
Such was my lady’s letter, and you may guess if it did not set the blood tingling in my veins, and make Paris seem a very different place from what it was an hour before.
I carefully read and re-read the letter till I had it by heart, and then as carefully tore it into a thousand pieces and scattered them to the wind. The one sentence referring to Captain Lestrange’s visit as an agent for the British Government was (little as I yet knew of the state of affairs in Paris) enough to hurry the innocent folk to whom it was addressed to the guillotine. What if my little lady and her mother were by this time in this terrible city and liable to the same fate?
I spent that afternoon wandering along the river on both banks, seeking for the Quai Necker, but nothing of that name could I find. The names were mostly new, and in honour of some person or place illustrious in the Revolution. At last, in despair, I was giving up the quest, when on an old book-stall I lit upon a plan of Paris dated ten years ago.
The bouquineur, a sour fellow whose trade had evidently suffered in recent months, would by no means allow me to look at it till I had paid the five sous he demanded, which I was glad enough to do. And after a very little study I found the Quai Necker marked down near the cathedral; and having carefully noted its bearings, I carried my map to a stall higher up, where I sold it for eight sous, thus making one of the most profitable bargains I ever struck.
Before dark, and while all Paris was ringing with the news that the twenty-two unfortunate Girondists were to be executed next morning, I found myself standing in a shabby passage beside the river, under the shadow of the great cathedral of Notre Dame.
Chapter Seventeen.
The overturned diligence in the Rue Saint Antoine.
For a night or two I haunted the Quai without success. If Mr Lestrange really lived there, he was either too fearful of venturing out, or some misadventure had already befallen him. I durst not make any inquiries, for fear of attracting attention to him, which was the last thing any one desired just then.
At last one night, after a week’s patient waiting, and when the lightness of my own, or rather poor Cassidy’s purse reminded me that I should soon have to seek, among other things, for my daily bread, I was skulking off for my lodging, when a woman hurried past me, whom, in the momentary glimpse I got of her, I recognised as Biddy McQuilkin, my father’s old gossip of Kerry Keel.
“Whisht, Biddy,” said I, laying my hand on her arm, “is it you? Sure, I’m Barry Gallagher, and I’m looking for your master, Mr Lestrange.”
She gave a gasp of terror as she felt my hand on her.
“Saints help us! what a fright you gave me, Barry, my boy. Sure, it’s not safe to be seen speaking with any one in the streets. I’m told there’s fifty more to die to-morrow!”
“I’ll follow you; you needn’t fear me; and I’ve a message for the master.”
“Thank God for that, if it’s a good one!” said she. “Keep close on the other side, and mark where I go in. I will leave the door open; we are on the top stage.” And she darted across the road.
I kept her well in view, till she disappeared at the door of a tall, dingy house of some six stories high. The bottom floor was occupied by a seller of wreaths and candles for worshippers at the cathedral—a poor enough business in those days. Above him was a dresser of frills and lace shirt-fronts; and above this were various tenants, some with callings, some with none, all apparently needy, and glad of the chance of hiding in so economical a tenement. A list of the occupants was hung on the door, by order of the Convention, and the names of Lestrange, femme, et domestique, duly figured upon it. A common staircase led to all the floors, but I encountered no one as I toiled to the top of all, where stood Biddy, with her finger up, motioning to me to be silent.
It went to my heart to see the two poor rooms into which I was ushered—one occupied as a bedroom and sitting-room by the old couple, the other as a kitchen and bedroom by Biddy. The walls were plain plaster, behind which you could hear rats running. The ceiling was low and black with smoke, the windows small and broken. The furniture, once good, was faded and in rents; and the few luxuries, such as books and pictures, looked so forlorn that the place would have seemed more comfortable without them.
All this I took in as I advanced into the room at Biddy’s heels.
“Plaze, yer honour, this is Barry Gallagher from Knockowen with a message for yez.”
Mr Lestrange sat dozing beside the fire, with a Moniteur on his knee. His wife, a sweet and placid-looking woman, sat opposite him knitting.
At the sound of Biddy’s announcement both started to their feet.
“A message!” exclaimed Mr Lestrange; “what message?”
“None too cheery,” said I, anxious not to raise false hopes.
I then recounted my adventures by the road, and ended up with reciting the contents (or most of them) of the letter from my lady at Knockowen. I took care to omit the little sentence about Miss Kit’s interest in Captain Lestrange’s movements, which did not seem to me worth recalling.
Mr Lestrange’s face fell heavily as he heard me out.
“No money!” he groaned. “We are still penned here. Yes, to be sure, you did well to destroy the letter. I thought Alice would have sent something—”
“Maybe she will bring some help with her,” said his lady.
The selfish old man laughed bitterly.
“She brings herself and her girl—a pretty help in times like these. Thank God, there is no room in the house for them!”
“You forget they cannot have heard of our losses. When last they heard of us we had received Gorman’s money for the mortgage, and were in comfort. It is since then that all has been confiscated.”
“That mortgage was robbery itself,” said Mr Lestrange. “Gorman knew I was hard hit, and not likely to stand out for a bargain, and he took advantage of it. The estates are worth treble what he gave.”
“That is past and gone,” said the lady. “We must be patient. Perhaps Felix will help us.”
“My nephew is a selfish man,” said the old gentleman; “besides, he has but his pay. And now he has no expectations from us we need not expect him to come near us.”
All this talk went on while Biddy and I stood near, hearing it all. At last the sturdy Biddy could stand it no longer.
“Hoot! take shame to yourself, Mr Lestrange. Thank God you’re not one of the fifty that ride in the tumbrel the morrow; thank God you’ve got a sweet wife that will bear with your grumblings; and thank God you’ve got a body like me that’s not afraid to tell you what I think of yez. Hold yer tongue now, and get to your beds.”
Biddy, as I learned later on, had stuck of her own accord to her master and mistress through all their troubles, and presumed on her position to take her chicken-hearted lord severely to task when, like to-night, the grumbling fit was upon him.
As for me, I was dismissed with little thanks from anybody; but Biddy bade me call now and again to have a crack with her.
“I had a liking for your father, poor soul!” said she, wiping a corner of her eye, “and thought he might have done worse than make me a mother to you and Tim, rest his soul! But it’s as well as it is, maybe. Poor Tim! I always liked him better than you. He was his mother’s son. Well, well, he’s dead too. Barry, my boy, we can’t all just have what we’ve not got; we all have to stand out of our own. Good-night to yez, and come and see an old body sometimes that held you in her arms when you were a fine kicking boy.”
I confess Biddy puzzled me a little by her talk. Whenever she spoke of old days she had the air of keeping a secret to herself, which roused my curiosity, and made me recall my poor mother’s dying words to myself. That set me thinking of Kilgorman and the strange mystery that hung there; and that set me on to think of Knockowen, and his honour and my lady and Miss Kit; and so by the time I had reached my shabby kennel in the Rue Saint Antoine, I was fairly miserable and ready to feel very lonely and friendless.
However, I was not left much time to mope, for in the night the street was up with a rumour that a “federalist” deputy, who was known to be in the pay of Pitt, the English minister, had been traced to some hiding-place near, and that a strict house-to-house search was being made by the soldiers for him.
“A bas les mouchards! à bas Pitt! à bas les étrangers! Vive la guillotine!” shrieked the mob.
Whereat I deemed it prudent to join them and shriek too, rather than await the visit of the soldiers. Not, thought I, that any one would do me the honour of mistaking me for an agent of Mr Pitt; but there was no knowing what craze the Paris mob was not ready for, or on what slight pretext an innocent man might not be sent to the scaffold.
So I sneaked quietly down the stairs, where, alas! I found I had fallen from the frying-pan into the fire.
A file of soldiers was ready for me, and received me with open arms.
“Your name, your business, your destination,” demanded they.
“Citizen soldiers, my name is Gallagher; I am a stranger in Paris in search of occupation.”
“Enough. You are arrested. Stand aside!”
“But, citizen—”
A stroke with the flat of the soldier’s sword silenced me, and I gave myself up for lost. But as a prisoner of the Revolution I should at least not be lonely, and on the guillotine itself I should have company.
The soldiers were too intent on watching for further fugitives to do more than keep me in sight of their loaded pistols. That was bad enough, however, and would have sufficed to land me in the Conciergerie, had not an alarm of fire, followed by volumes of smoke, just then proceeded from a house opposite that in which the fugitive deputy was supposed to be hidden. A rush took place for the spot and the loud sounding of the tocsin down the street, and in the midst of the confusion I dived between the legs of my captors, upsetting the one who covered me with his pistol, so that the weapon went off harmlessly over my head, and next moment I was safe in the thick of the crowd, struggling for a view of the fire.
It was a strange, motley crowd, composed not only of the rascality of Paris, but of a number of shopkeepers and respectable citizens whom the rumour of the fire and the arrest of the notorious deputy had called on the scene at this midnight hour. Many of the faces lit up by the lurid glare of the flames were haggard and uneasy, as if they belonged to those who, like me, found a crowd the safest hiding-place in those days. A few seemed drawn together by a love of horror in any form. Others were there for what they might steal. Others, sucked in by the rush, were there by no will of their own, involuntary spectators of a gruesome spectacle.
Among the latter were the unfortunate occupants of a travel-stained coach, who, after surviving all the perils of the road between Dieppe and Paris, had now been suddenly upset by the crowd, and were painfully, and amid the coarse jeers of the onlookers, extricating themselves from their embarrassing position. Just as the tide swept me to the spot, a male passenger had drawn himself up through the window and was scrambling down on to terra firma.
“Help the ladies!” cried he, glad enough evidently of his own escape, but not over-anxious to return to the scene of his alarm; “help the ladies, some one!”
Just then, first a hand, then a pale face appeared at the window, which, if I had seen a ghost, could not have startled me more. It was the face of Miss Kit, with the red light of the fire glowing on it.
“Help us!” she said, in French.
Need I tell you I had her in my arms in a moment; and after her her mother, who was not only frightened but hurt by the shock of the overturn.
That little moment was worth all the perils and risks of the past months; and if I could have had my own way, I would have stood there, with my little lady’s hand clutching my arm, for a month.
It was impossible they could recognise me, with my back to the light, happening upon them in so unlooked-for a way. But when I said, “Trust to me, Miss Kit,” her hand tightened on my sleeve with a quick pressure, and she said,—
“Barry! thank God we are safe now!”
I was a proud man that night as I fought my way through the crowd with two distressed ladies under my wing, and a fist and a foot for any one who so much as dared to touch the hem of their garments.
Mrs Gorman became so faint in a little that I was forced, as soon as we were out of the thick of the crowd, to call a vehicle.
The soldiers at the end of the street, when they saw who our party was, and heard that we were passengers in the overturned carriage, let us go by; “for we had been already well overhauled at the barrier,” said they.
Once clear—and she kept her hand on my arm all the time—Kit said,—
“Then you are alive still, Barry?”
“Ay, Miss Kit; and ready to die for you.”
“This is a dreadful place!” said she with a shiver, looking up at the high houses we passed; “but it was worse before you found us.”
How could I help, by way of answer, touching her hand with mine, as if by accident?
“We are to go to the Hotel Lambert, Rue Boileau,” said she; “and to-morrow we are to seek our kinsmen the Lestranges.”
“I have found them,” said I.
Here Mrs Gorman looked up.
“Found them? That is good; we shall have shelter at last.”
“Alas, mistress,” said I, “they have lost all their goods and are living in great poverty. It will be poor shelter.”
Here the poor lady broke down.
“O Kit!” moaned she, “why did your father send us on this cruel journey? Did he want to be rid of us before our time?”
“Nonsense, mother; he thought we should be safer here than among the Leaguers in Donegal. So we shall be—at least we have Barry to protect us.”
Whereat we drove up at the Hotel Lambert.
Chapter Eighteen.
Days of terror.
I confess, delighted as I was to find again my lady and my little mistress, I could have wished them anywhere but in Paris at such a time as this. How they reached the place at all it was difficult to understand, till I heard that they had crossed from Dublin under the escort of a prominent member of the Jacobin Club, with whom his honour had large dealings in the matter of arms, and who had provided the necessary passports.
“Indeed,” said Miss Kit, “the soldiers everywhere were so respectful to us that I think Monsieur Cazin must have passed us off as his wife and daughter. At any rate he accompanied us into Paris, only quitting us at the barrier, and has promised to call on us at the hotel to-morrow. See here is his letter to the maître d’hôtel, in which he states that we are French ladies, kinswomen of his own.”
The maître d’hôtel, when he read the letter, made no difficulty about admitting “les citoyennes Cazin” as he entered them in his book, and their valet. So for that night, at least, we were safe. And as both ladies spoke French fluently, and I tolerably, we passed well enough for what we were not.
But I disliked the whole business, still more when I heard from some of the attendants in the hotel that this citizen Cazin was a man looked askance upon by some of his own party, and reputed to be both greedy and heartless.
If I could have had my own way, I would have tried that very night to get them out of the city they had been at so much trouble to reach. But they were worn-out with fatigue and anxiety, and were fain to lay their heads anywhere. Before the night was out their baggage, rescued from the overturned diligence, was brought to the hotel, labelled (as I could not help noticing) with the name “Cazin,” which only involved us all in deeper complication and trouble.
Next day we waited for the promised visit from my ladies’ travelling companion, but he never came. And in the evening we discovered the reason. The maître d’hôtel demanded admission to their apartment and announced, with a roughness very different from his civility of the night before, that at the Convention that day several suspected persons had been denounced, among others the citizen Cazin, for having been in traitorous treaty with the enemies of the Republic. In a few hours it would become known that he had travelled to Paris with two ladies, and it was as much as his (my host’s) neck was worth to allow those ladies to remain another hour in his house. Indeed his duty was to inform the authorities at once who his guests were.
Happily for us his hotel had been visited by the police only the night before—ere the travellers arrived—and he had not yet exposed their names on his list. But it was known that the baggage, delivered last night, bore the name of the suspected Cazin, and that was enough to ruin us all.
You may fancy the distress of the ladies at this news. All they could do was to hand one of their little rolls of assignats to the landlord, and promise that within an hour he should be rid of them.
“But the baggage,” said mine host, who, in the midst of his perturbation, saw his way to a solatium for himself; “I must detain that, and hand it over if required.”
“But it is not Monsieur Cazin’s; it is my lady’s, who is no connection of the suspect,” said I.
“If the ladies cannot part with their baggage,” said mine host, fumbling the notes, “they must remain here with it. I confiscate it in the name of the Republic One and Indivisible.”
It was no use arguing or appealing; our only hope lay in civility.
“Citizen host,” said I, “is quite right, and the ladies are grateful for his consideration. Their name is Lestrange. They know nothing of Citizen Cazin or his baggage, and they bid adieu to the Hotel Lambert forthwith.”
The cunning landlord, having gained his ends, returned to his civility.
“The ladies,” said he, “are wise. But they will do well to put on the garments of plain citoyennes, which I can provide, in exchange for what they wear; otherwise they may be traced. That done, they will do well to leave my poor house on foot with the young Citoyen Lestrange,” (here he pointed to me), “and forget to return.”
It was good advice, though it went to my heart to see my mistresses further robbed. But when presently they appeared in the plain garb of common Parisiennes I confess I felt relieved, for no one who saw them would suspect them of being foreign ladies, though any one would be bound to admit they were two very fair women. As for me, I was not long in bartering my livery coat for the blue blouse of a workman; and thus that afternoon, as the light was beginning to fail, and all the world was talking of the execution of the beautiful Madame Roland, which was to take place in the morning, three humble persons quitted the side door of the Hotel Lambert and bent their steps dolefully towards the bridge that led across to the Quai near the Island of the City, once known as Quai Necker.
We hoped that here at least we should find a retreat until it was possible to consider what next should be done.
Leaving the ladies to inspect the stalls which lined the river, I ascended first to announce their arrival; but half-way up the long stairs I encountered a middle-aged woman with sour, haggard face, who demanded my business.
“I desire to see Madame Lestrange, who lives on the highest stage,” said I.
“Madame Lestrange lives there no longer,” said she with a shrug. “Last night she and her husband and their servant were put under arrest on the accusation of Deputé Duport, for holding connection during his life with the traitor Sillery.”
“Arrested!” exclaimed I, staggered at the news.
“Arrested,” said she dryly, “and are now at the Austin Convent. To-morrow, perhaps, we may hear of them at the Place.”
This was too terrible, but I durst not betray my horror.
“Then,” said I, “if that is so, the top stage is vacant. I am seeking lodgings for my mother and sister and myself, and had hoped Madame Lestrange could have helped me.”
“The top floor is vacant,” said the woman, brightening up, for the calamity of the day had robbed her of her tenants, “to any one who can pay five francs a week.”
“We can do that,” said I, “and can pay you in advance.”
“Enough,” said the woman, holding out her hand greedily.
I brought the ladies up, breaking the news about their kinsfolk on the way, and imploring them to keep up appearances. The landlady scrutinised them sharply, and demanded what their occupation was.
“We are seamstresses, my child and I,” said my lady; “and my son earns what he can at the stables.”
“If you are good workers,” said the woman, “I can give you some employ. Come up and see your rooms.”
It was a sad introduction, that of these delicate ladies to the squalid apartments of their arrested kinsfolk. But they kept up bravely; only when the woman departed with her first five francs in her hand, they fell on the little shabby sofa and broke into tears.
But miserable as we were, we were at least safe for a while; and as the weeks followed one another—terrible weeks for Paris—we grew not only more reconciled to our lot, but sometimes almost happy.
We gave ourselves the name of Regnier, and in a little time our sour landlady fulfilled her promise of finding work for the ladies’ needles. As for me, I lit on occupation close by, with a man who let horses for hire, and here once more I found myself engaged in the old familiar occupation of the Knockowen days. The ladies rarely ventured out, and when they did it was usually after dark, and always under my escort.
Somehow or other our common lot, the common garb we wore, and the common dependence we felt on one another, made our make-believe little family into something very like a real one. When the day’s work was done, and the candle was lit and the log thrown on the fire, it was hard not to forget that I was after all only a poor serving-man to these two ladies. They were so grateful and gentle to me, and my little lady’s eyes, when sometimes they met mine, were wont to light up so brightly, that, had I been less strict with myself, I should have been—tempted, many a time, to presume on all this kindness, and give myself the airs and privileges of an equal. But Heaven kept me in mind of what was due to her; and though I loved her secretly, she was always my little mistress when we were together.
I was not long in hearing, among other things, the news of what had happened at Knockowen since I left. When my overturned boat had drifted ashore, they all set me down as dead, some with regret, some with indifference, some with relief.
Among the latter, I guessed, was his honour, who never took kindly to me, and bestowed more dislike on me, I always thought, than my importance deserved. However, my absence did not make much difference.
“It was dreadful after you had gone,” said my little mistress. “We never knew what would happen next. Father could not keep friends with both sides, and yet he durst not break with either. The house was fired into from time to time by the Leaguers; and yet he continued to obey their biddings and wink at all the smuggling of arms and secret drilling that went on, which he, as a magistrate, ought to have stopped. Oh dear, it was hard to know what to wish! And one day he was summoned by some other magistrates to lead a party to capture the crew of a smuggling ship. He sent Martin off secretly to give them warning; but somehow Martin failed to deliver his message in time, and the smugglers were caught. Then he was in dread lest they should betray him, and used all his efforts to let them escape. Then, when one night they broke bonds, he led a hue and cry after them for appearance’ sake, but, of course, in a wrong direction, and in consideration of all this he was let alone by the League. Mr Cazin then came over and stayed at Knockowen a week, collecting all the arms he could get, and making himself polite to mother and me. My father, who desired to be rid of us that he might follow his own plots, saw a way, at last, of getting out of his difficulty, and handed the Frenchman over a large number of guns which had been intended for the Donegal men, on condition he would see us safe to Paris.”
“And where is his honour, meanwhile?” I asked.
“I can’t say, Barry. Not, I think, at Knockowen. He has written us not a line, though we have written several times to him. I sometimes wish we were safe back at home,” said she with a sigh.
Well might she wish it, for that winter Paris was a hell upon earth!
For a time I succeeded in keeping away the shadow of “the terror” from that little top storey in the Quai Necker. The ladies knew that blood was being shed, that liberty was being extinguished, that holy religion was being spurned, in the world below them. But the tumbrels that made their daily ghastly journey did not pass their way. They heard nothing of the roll of drums, of the shrieks of the mob, of the dull crash of the knife, of the streams of blood, in the Place. They saw nothing of the horrors of the prison-houses, in which, day by day, and week by week, the doomed citizens made their brief sojourn on the road to death. They did not even know, as I did, that one evening, in one of the sad batches which rode from the Austin Convent to the Conciergerie, and next morning from the Conciergerie to the guillotine, rode a broken-down couple called Lestrange, and beside them, in the same cart, the ci-devant Citizen Cazin.
As the Citoyennes Regnier sat patiently and knitted red caps for the blood-drunken citizens without, their gentle ears may have caught occasional shouts and rushings of feet, and they may have guessed something of the tragedies that were being enacted below. But they kept their own counsel, and looked out seldom from the little window, and talked in whispers of the shadows that flitted across Lough Swilly, and the happy life that was to follow after all this buffeting and exile.
Alas! that was not to be yet. For all their courage, their cheeks grew daily more pale; and into that little damp, cold attic, from which they never ventured except at night, and where, as poverty gradually entered by the window, the fire went out on the hearth, the stress of “the terror” at last penetrated.
Our hostess, the grim woman of whom I spoke, was the first to lose nerve, and during the day, when I was away, would come and retail some of the horrors she herself had witnessed. I could tell by their blank looks when I returned that some one had been tampering with their peace, and I fear the warmth with which I expostulated with the disturber did us all no good.
Another day, also when I was absent, the police made a visitation; and though my two mistresses passed muster, they carried off one shrieking victim from the floor below—a widow, whose only crime was that her husband had once been in the service of his king. Her cries of terror, as they dragged her to her doom, rang in my lady’s ears for weeks, and unnerved her altogether.
A still worse fright befell them, one early morning, when we sought the fresh air in the direction of the Champ de Mars, where I hoped we should be safe from crowds of all kinds. At a turning of the road we suddenly encountered, before there was time to avoid it, the most terrible of all crowds—that which escorted a condamné to his execution. It was in vain I tried to draw the ladies aside; the mob was upon us before we could escape. I had seen many a Paris mob before, but none so savage or frantic as this. The poor doomed man, one Bailly (as I heard afterwards, formerly a mayor of Paris), stood bare-headed, cropped, with hands tied behind him, and with only a thin shirt to protect him from the cold. His face, naturally grave and placid, was so marred and stained with mud and blood as to be almost inhuman. At every step of the way the people hurled dirt and execrations upon him, laughing at his sorry appearance, and goading on one another to further insult. By sheer force they were carrying him, guillotine, executioner, and all to a great dirt-heap by the river-bank, where only they would permit the deed of death to be performed.
Just as this ghastly procession passed us, a missile, better aimed than most, sent the poor wretch staggering to his knees, and in the rush that followed he was happily hidden from our sight.
But the two poor ladies had seen enough. Miss Kit’s beautiful face was white as marble, her lips quivered, and her hands clenched in a spasm of self-control. Her mother, less strong, tottered and fell heavily on my arm in a faint.
It was a terrible position just then, for to be suspected of pity for a condamné was an offence which might easily place the sympathiser on the tumbrel beside the victim. I observed one or two faces—brutal, coarse faces—turned our way, and overheard remarks not unmingled with jeers on the lady’s plight. Happily for us, a new humour of the crowd, to make their poor prisoner dismount and carry his own guillotine, swept the crowd in a new direction, and in a moment or two left us standing almost alone on the path.
It was some time before my lady could recover enough to leave the place. Still longer was it before we had her safe in the attic on the Quai Necker; and ere that happened more than one note of warning had fallen on my ears.
“Save yourselves; you are marked,” whispered a voice, as we came to the Quai.
I looked sharply round. Only a lame road-mender was in sight, and he was too far away to have been the speaker. The voice was that, I thought, of a person of breeding and sympathy, but its owner, whoever he was, had vanished.
“There they are,” said another voice as we entered the doorway.
This time I saw the speaker—a vicious-looking woman, who stood with her friend across the road and pointed our way with her finger.
“So,” thought I, as Miss Kit and I carried our fainting burden up the stairs, “we have at least one friend and one enemy in Paris.”
Not a word did my little mistress and I exchange as we laid my lady on the bed, and took breath after our toilsome ascent. She tried to smile as I left her to the task of restoration, and retired to my kitchen to prepare our scanty breakfast.
While thus occupied I was startled by a tap at the window, followed by a head which I recognised as that of the road-mender I had lately seen. He must have crawled along the parapet which connected the houses in our block, or else have been waiting where he was till he could find me alone.
His cap was slouched over his eyes, and his face was as grimy as the roads he mended. His finger was raised eagerly to his lips as he beckoned to me to open the sash.
An instinct of self-preservation impelled me to obey. He clambered in and shut the window behind him. Then, turning to face me, I encountered a double shock. The lameness had gone; the figure was erect; the face, in spite of its grime, was youthful and handsome! That was the first shock. The second was even greater. For I suddenly recognised in the form that stood before me my old acquaintance, Captain Lestrange himself.
Chapter Nineteen.
The courtyard of the Conciergerie.
“Hush!” said Captain Lestrange, before I could utter a word. “The ladies are not safe here; they are marked down by the spies. They must escape at once.”
“My lady is still in a faint,” said I.
“Faint or no, she must come. Tell them I am here.”
He spoke as a soldier with authority; and a pang of jealousy smote me as I looked at his handsome presence in spite of its disguise.
I went to my lady’s room and announced him. She lay half stupified, with her eyes open, her bosom heaving, and a choking sob in her throat. Miss Kit kneeled at the bedside and held her hand.
Both were too numb and dazed to express much amazement at the news I brought; and when Captain Lestrange followed me in, no breath was wasted on empty greetings.
“I lodge in an attic six houses away. If you could only get on to the roof,” said he, “you would reach it easily.”
“We are not far from the roof already,” said I, pointing to a corner of the ceiling through which, even as we spoke, flakes of snow were drifting into the room.
Captain Lestrange took a log of fuel and poked the hole, till it was large enough to let a person through.
He bade me tear the sheet, make a band of it, and fasten it round my mistress, while he clambered through my window on to the roof. It was a perilous climb, but the captain was lithe and active as a cat. In a minute we saw him looking in through the hole in the ceiling.
“Now hand me the end of the band,” said he, “and come here and help me to haul.—Nerve yourself, cousin, and all will be well.”
Between us, we had no difficulty in drawing the poor lady through the opening on to the roof; and when we let down the band for Miss Kit, her light, little form followed readily enough.
“Down,” said the captain, crouching in the gutter of the parapet and beginning to crawl along it.
We followed painfully and slowly, finding the journey very long, and expecting any moment to hear the pursuer behind.
Presently we came to a halt, and saw our conductor remove some slates and discover an opening into the house below.
Once more the linen band came into requisition. The ladies were lowered into the room. The captain and I paused to set the slates, so that no one should be able to detect the place of our entrance. Then he swung himself over the parapet on to the ledge of the little window below, bidding me follow. Next moment we stood, all four of us, in a tiny chamber, no bigger than a cupboard, with nothing in it but a little bed, a chair, and a shelf, on which stood a loaf and a bottle of wine.
“Welcome to my humble quarters, cousins,” said he. “They are neither large nor water-tight, but I natter myself they are airy and command an extensive view. We will be safe here till night, but then we must seek something more spacious and secluded.”
And with all the grace in the world, he poured out a glass of wine for my lady and begged her to drink it.
Presently Miss Kit said, with the first smile I had seen on her face that day,—
“I am too bewildered to ask questions, otherwise I should like to know how all this has come to pass.”
“Not now,” said he. “I am as bewildered and perplexed as you are.—Gallagher, go to your daily work, but return early; and bring with you,”—here he handed me a gold piece—“provisions for a journey.”
It was hard to be dismissed thus at a moment of peril. But my little lady’s words and the smile that accompanied them made up for it.
“Yes. Come back early, Barry. We shall feel short of a protector while you are away.”
And she held out her hand, which I kissed with a glare at the captain, who only laughed, and said,—
“Don’t forget the provisions.”
Little I thought as I groped my way down the tumble-down staircase how many weary months were to elapse before I was to hold that gentle little hand in mine again.
I had reached the stables, and was rubbing down a spent horse, when I became aware that a woman was standing at the gate. I recognised her at once as the woman who had pointed us out that morning when we entered our house, and my heart filled with forebodings as I saw her.
It was a relief when my employer presently ordered me to take a horse round to the house of a citizen in the suburbs. The woman had gone when I started, and after half-an-hour’s trot I almost dismissed her from my mind. My orders were, after delivering the horse at its destination, to return on foot, calling on my way at the hay merchant’s with an order. This I duly performed; and was hastening back by way of the Rue Saint Honoré, when two muskets were suddenly crossed in front of me, and a harsh voice said,—
“Regnier, you are arrested by order of the Committee of Public Safety.”
“On what charge?” faltered I.
“On the accusation of the Citoyenne Souchard, who denounces you as the friend of royalism and of the miscreant Bailly.”
“I am no friend of either,” I exclaimed. “I do not—”
“Silence! march!” said the soldier.
Resistance was hopeless, escape impossible. In a daze I marched on, pointed at and hooted at by the passers-by, amid cries of,—
“A bas les mouchards! Mort aux aristocrates!” (Saint Patrick! that I should be taken for an aristocrat.) “Vive la guillotine!”
I cared not what became of me now, but when presently my conductors actually turned towards the Island of the City, and I caught sight of the high roofs of the houses on the Quai Necker, a wild hope of seeing my little mistress once more took hold of me. Alas! it was but for a moment. The cold muzzle of the soldier’s gun recalled me to myself.
I longed to know if the accuser, who seemed to know my name and all my movements, had joined the names of the ladies in my denunciation. If so, woe betide them and all of us. In the midst of my trouble the one thought that cheered me, despite the pang of jealousy that came with it, was that they were not without protection; and that Captain Lestrange, who had shown himself so ready of resource in the morning, might succeed even without my help in rescuing those innocent ones from the bloody hands of “the terror.”
A chill went through me when it dawned upon me at last that I was being conducted to the fatal Conciergerie—that half-way house between life and death towards which so many roads converged, but from which only one, that to the guillotine, led.
An angry parley took place at the door between the jailer and my captors.
“Why here?” demanded the former; “we are packed to the bursting point.”
“To-morrow you will have more room by fifty,” said the other.
“This is not to-morrow,” growled the hard-worked official.
“The détenu is your parishioner,” said the soldier.
“It is scandalous the slowness with which the Committee works,” said the jailer. “Fifty a day goes no way; we want one hundred and fifty.”
“You shall have it, Citizen Concierge. Patience!—Now, Regnier, enter, and adieu,” said he, with a push from the butt-end of his gun.
Beyond entering my name and assigning me my night’s quarters, no notice was taken of me by my jailers. I was allowed to wander on into the crowded courtyard, where of the hundreds who prowled about like caged animals none troubled themselves so much as to look up at the new unfortunate. Men and women of all sorts were there: gentlemen who held themselves aloof and had their little cercle in one corner, with servants to attend them; rogues and thieves who quarrelled and gambled with one another, and made the air foul with their oaths; terrified women and children who huddled together for shelter from the impudent looks and words of the ruffians, who amused themselves by insulting them. Sick people were there with whom it was a race whether disease or the guillotine would claim them first. And philosophers were there, who looked with calm indifference on the scene, and jested and discussed among themselves.
Among this motley company I was lost, and, indeed, it would have troubled me to be anything else. I found leaning-room against the wall, and had no better wish than that the promised fifty who to-morrow were to feed the guillotine might count me in their number.
As soon as the short February day closed in, we were unceremoniously ordered within doors. Some of the more distinguished and wealthy retired to their private apartments; the women (though I heard they were not always so fortunate) were shut up in quarters of their own. Others retired in batches to chambers, for the use of which they had clubbed together in bands of twenty or thirty. The rest of us, comprising all the poorer prisoners, were huddled into great foul, straw-strewn rooms to sleep and pass the night as best we might.
Rough countryman as I have been, the thought of those nights in the Conciergerie turns my stomach even now. The low ceiling and small windows made the atmosphere, laden as it was with dirt of all sorts, choking and intolerable. The heat, even on a winter night, was oppressive. The noise, the groaning, the wrangling, the fighting, the pilfering, were distracting. Only twice in the night silence, and that but for a few moments at a time, prevailed.
Once was when the guard, accompanied by great dogs, made their nightly round, kicking us who lay in their way this side and that, and testing every bar and grating of our prison with hammers and staves. For the sake of the dogs, who were stern disciplinarians, we kept the peace till the bolt was once more turned upon us.
The other time the hush was of a more terrible kind, as I discovered that first night. A jangle of keys without imposed a sudden lull on the noise. The door opened, and in came the concierge and his turnkeys. Every eye turned, not on the man or his myrmidons, but on the paper that he held in his hand. It was the list of prisoners who to-morrow were to appear before the Tribunal—that is to say, of the victims who the day after to-morrow were to ride in the tumbrels to the guillotine.
A deadly silence prevailed as the reading proceeded, broken only by the agonised shriek of some unfortunate, and the gradual sighs of relief of those whose names were omitted.
The ceremony over, the door (on the outside of which a turnkey had chalked the doomed names) swung to, and all once more was noise and babel. The victims drew together, embracing their friends and uttering their farewells. The others laughed louder than ever, like schoolboys who have escaped the rod. Morning came, and with it the summons. Those who quitted us we knew we should never see again. They would spend that night in the dungeon of the condamnés; the next day the lumbering roll of the tumbrels would announce to us that they were on their way to the Place de la Revolution.
The first night, I confess, I was disappointed that the fatal list did not contain my name; but as days, and then weeks, and then months passed, the love of life rose high within me, and I grew to tremble for that which I had once hoped for. Day by day I scrutinised the new arrivals in the vague expectation of seeing among them those I loved best. But they never came.
I made few, if any, acquaintances, for I resolved to keep my mouth shut. Spies, I knew, infested the prisons as they did the streets, and many a chance word uttered in the confidence of the dungeon was reported and used as evidence against the victim. Now and again we were thrown into excitement by the arrival in our midst of some notable prisoner, before whose name, a few short weeks since, all Paris, nay, all France had trembled, but who now was marked down and doomed by his rivals in power. And sometimes rumours of convulsions without penetrated the walls of our cells, and made us hope that, could we but endure a while, the end of “the terror” was not far distant.
I remember one night when a new prisoner whispered to me that the great Robespierre, at whose nod any head in Paris might drop into the dreadful basket, had been blown upon within the walls of the Convention itself.
“Death is marked on his face,” said he; “and when he falls there is hope for us, for the people are sick of blood.”
Alas! this same poor whisperer heard his name called out that very night, and fell grovelling at my side, as if I could help him.
Still my name was held back. Either they had overlooked it in the crowd, or had marked it through as dead already, or considered it less important than others who had more pressing claims on the executioner’s knife.
Hope rose within me. I became so used to being passed that I ceased to expect anything else, and only counted the days till the blood-red cloud should have drifted past and left me free.
When, therefore, on the very night that news had come in that Robespierre had indeed fallen, and was even then before his judges, I heard the name “Regnier” read off the fatal list, I broke into a cold sweat of amazement and terror, and fancied myself in a dream.
My name was the last on the list. With a dreadful fascination I watched the turnkey chalk it on the door and the governor fold up his paper and stick it in his belt. Then as they turned to the door despair seized me. But before they could leave, a sudden clamour at the far end of the room detained them. One of the condemned, driven mad by the announcement of his doom, had sprung to the window and was tearing at the bars with such superhuman force that they promised at any moment to yield.
The jailer and his men made a dash to seize him, and in that moment I slipped out of the half-closed door, stopping only to wipe out my name with my cap as I passed, and crept into the courtyard.
No one could have seen my departure, for though I lay hid an hour under the shadow of the wall, and even saw the jailer and his men cross the court, there was no hue and cry or alarm of an escape. Nor, I surmise, did any one even of my fellow-prisoners, distracted as they were by their own concerns and the excitement of the madman’s attempt, miss me.
My only hope now lay in patience and prudence. To scale the wall I knew was impossible. To steal through the governor’s office would mean instant detection. But to wait where I was was my only chance.
I had studied the ways of the place enough to know that on the stroke of six the outer gates swung open to admit the carts which were to carry to the scaffold the victims of the day. I knew, too, since the horse-master I had served had often supplied carts on an emergency, that these vehicles were usually sent in charge of common carters, one man often being in charge of two or three. These men, having deposited their carts in the yard, were wont to go off to breakfast and return in an hour to convey their freight under an escort of Guards to the place of execution.
Their daily arrival was now so common an occurrence that it attracted little attention inside or out. Indeed, the gate was often left standing open a minute or two while some parley was taking place; for no prisoners were allowed in the court till after the departure of the procession, and no precautions therefore seemed necessary for closing it with special celerity.
This, then, was my hope. Could I but lie perdu beside the gate till the time of opening, I might in a happy moment slip out. As if to favour me, a cart of straw intended for the floors of the prison rooms had been admitted into the court the night before, and stood drawn up close to the gate. It was not difficult to conceal myself at the tail of this, under the straw, and so remain unseen, not only by the carters that entered, but by the turnkey that let them in. By equal good fortune, the owner of the cart had left his coat and whip and cap behind him, thus giving me just a disguise that suited me best.
The night—it was July then—seemed interminable; and with morning a drenching rain set in that found its way through the straw and soaked me to the skin. I heard the city without gradually waking up. Market-carts rumbled in the roads, the shrill cry of the street vendors sounded in the air, and above all was the heavy splash of the rain.
At last a long low sound fell on my ear, which I knew only too well to proclaim the approach of the carts crawling in our direction. Nearer and nearer they came till they stopped at the gate, and the familiar bell tolled out. I heard the footsteps of the warder plashing across the yard, growling at the rain. Then I heard the grating of the bolts as they were slowly drawn back, and the creaking of the gates on their hinges. Then the rumble began again, and one by one the carts drew up into the yard. There were eight of them, and as I peeped out I could see that the last three were all in charge of one driver, who rode on the leader. The warder, impatient to return to shelter, called to this man to see the bolts made fast after him, which the man, a surly fellow and hardly sober, grumblingly promised to do at his own convenience.
Now was my chance. I slipped from my hiding-place, clad in the driver’s blouse and peaked cap, with a whip over my shoulder and a straw between my lips, and strolled quietly and to all appearance unconcernedly out into the street. If any saw me come out, they probably set me down as one of the tumbrel drivers on his way to breakfast, and paid me no more heed than such a fellow deserved; indeed less, for on that day of all others Paris was in a tremendous ferment. The tocsin was ringing from the steeples, there was a rush of people towards the Tuileries, and cries of “A bas Robespierre”—the most wonderful cry Paris had heard yet.
In the midst of it all I walked unchallenged to the Quai Necker. Alas! any hopes I had of comfort there were vanished. The familiar top storey stood empty, with the hole still in the roof, and six doors away, where I had left them last, the attic was empty too.