"Why, it is folly; think of the National Guard!" Barabant exclaimed.
"I see well you have just arrived. The National Guard, indeed! We are the National Guard. It is only the Swiss we have to fear."
They had gained the right bank of the Seine, and paused from time to time to watch the water-carriers filling their casks in the river, and the loiterers angling sleepily in the shadow of the boats.
Barabant, despite the fires of patriotic fervor, had for some time forgotten his mission in the contemplation of the fresh cheeks and the free carriage of his companion, more and more beguiled from his task of righting the wrongs of the nation by this gipsy of the streets who traversed the rough paths of fortune with such perfect bonhomie.
Nicole, happening to look up, met an unmistakable fixture of gaze, and divined the workings of his mind. She withdrew slightly and said reprovingly: "Not too fast, Citoyen Barabant; we are not in the provinces."
Barabant defended himself.
"My dear Nicole, I have committed no offense. I have done nothing but wish. Judge my acts; my thoughts are not offenses."
"You are not slow at an answer, citoyen," said Nicole, amused. "There, take my hand if you wish. Only, not too fast."
He took her hand, and together they went joyfully through Paris, laughing like two children of the people.
"Barabant, I like you," she said from time to time. "You are a good fellow." Once she added naïvely, "You know, all the same, it is lonely at times." Then, with a laugh, "Allons, comrade!"
She led him through the boulevards, pointing out celebrities at every step, showing him the cafés, Feuillantes or Jacobin. They were constantly halted by the sudden assembly of a crowd to listen to some singer perched on a chair above their shoulders, intoning his ballads.
Presently Nicole said: "Barabant, do you not feel something in the atmosphere—something extraordinary?"
He sharpened his wits and gradually began to distinguish currents in the crowd, and it seemed to him that there was some subtle communication by furtive glances of inquiry and nods of intelligence.
"I believe it will be for to-night," she whispered.
He felt in her hand something nervous and exalted.
"Were you at the taking of the Bastille?" he asked.
"Yes. Wait till you see the women of Paris!" Her eyes grew large as they lost themselves in recollection. Then suddenly she added: "But you haven't seen the gardens of the Palais Royal, and the tree of the green cockades from which Desmoulins called us to arms!"
Leading him into the historic garden, she showed him the chestnut-tree surrounded by a crowd of curious seekers, many of whom snatched up the leaves for mementos.
Everywhere were swarms of children, shrieking high, shrill notes, running and leaping, dodging in and out of the most sedate groups, and stopping occasionally to mimic the swollen front and bombastic arm of the hundred and one orators about whom swirled a hundred and one eddies. Newsboys, racing ahead of their competitors, cried hoarsely the latest bulletins; while in their wake improvised orators mounted on tables and announced the news amid a gale of comments. Through the throng a score of flower-girls twisted their way, calling their patriotic cockades, nodding familiarly to Nicole, who from all sides received salutations of deputies and orators.
"You are well known," said Barabant, surprised at the range of her acquaintance.
"Pardi, I should hope so," she answered, with a proud toss of her head. "Bouquetières are useful. We go everywhere, see everything. We are the scouts of the Republic. I have influence, Barabant; I'll push you ahead," she added, with a determined nod. "Can you speak from the tribune?"
"I have done so."
"Good. You must go to the club. Speak out. Do not be afraid. I adore fire and spirit!" She looked at him critically. "You have the eyes and the lips of the orator. Yes, I'm sure you can speak."
Barabant thrilled at the inspiration in her eyes, and some of the fierce, exulting spirit, the unconquerable gaiety and daring of this gamine, passed swiftly into his soul. Filled with the bombastic daring and sublime confidence of the patriot, he cried: "Give me the chance; give but the chance! They shall hear me—and listen!"
Nicole had a wild impulse to embrace him, but, restraining her enthusiasm, she contented herself with passing from his hand to his arm.
"How old are you?" she asked all at once.
"I am twenty-four," Barabant said, with importance.
"Why, you are a child."
"Camille Desmoulins is not thirty."
"True."
"And what is six years?"
"I hadn't thought of it," admitted Nicole. "I am eighteen; but in Paris at eighteen there is not much unlearned. Allons, les enfants." She drew up to his side, hanging a little on his arm. "Barabant, you are a lucky fellow," she said mischievously.
Barabant, who perfectly understood her allusion to mean lucky in meeting her, drew her closer as they elbowed their way out of the throng. He bent his head to scrutinize her, while Nicole not too consciously accepted the gaze, confident in herself: she was young and she was a Parisian. Her features were rather saucy than regular; her figure, though full and graceful, was perhaps too perfect for eighteen, when a certain slenderness is a future guaranty. But the eyes of the young man do not look into the future. Barabant saw only—giving color to her cheeks, a glow to the eye, and a spring to the foot—that bloom which is of youth and which speaks of eagerness and impatience to embrace life.
Suddenly Nicole, seeking an interruption to this scrutiny, which, though delightful, had become embarrassing, exclaimed, "There's Louison now." She made a movement as though to free her arm, immediately checking it.
Barabant, looking up, beheld the high eyebrows, the starting eyes, and the curious, thin smile of the flower-girl who had spoken to him the night before.
She sent Nicole a greeting from her fingertips, and then perceiving Barabant, she accosted him with a smile of tolerant amusement.
"Why, it's my little man from the country!" Nodding, she passed, with the exclamation, "Bien vrai, you don't lose any time!"
"What, you have already met her?" Nicole exclaimed, disengaging her arm, suddenly quieted and sobered.
"In the Rue St. Honoré, last night."
A frown, swift as a thunderbolt, passed over Nicole's forehead. She stopped, extended her hand, and said curtly, "I must go; good day."
Barabant looked at her in dismay.
"What has happened? What have I done?"
She shook her head, and without further explanation disappeared.
When Barabant had groped his way up the tortuous ascent, he was surprised to find his door open, sending a feeble glow over the remainder of his journey. He crossed the threshold on tiptoe, and, to his amazement, beheld a man, in the uniform of the National Guard, stretched out upon his bed, and two lank legs that, over-lapping, were perched on the footboards. He came forward, advanced another step, and recognized Dossonville.
Barabant, believing him to be shamming, went softly to the farther corner and installed himself to wait. But the steady, tranquil breathing of the sleeper soon convinced him. With a sudden inspiration, he stole to the threshold, grasping the handle of the door. The next moment there thundered upon the slumberer the cry:
"Arrest him! The aristocrat!"
As though propelled from a catapult, the lank form in one bound shot over the end of the bed, threw two chairs in front of him as a rampart, snatched out his sword, and beheld, in this bellicose posture, no horrid band of Jacobins, but the lithe figure of Barabant, laughing silently, with folded arms.
"Tonnerre de Dieu! Why did you do that?"
Dossonville returned the sword to the scabbard, pushed aside the rampart, and extended his hand, saying, "I was asleep; serves me right; but you have a rude manner of jesting."
"I did not suspect your conscience was so uneasy," Barabant said, retaining the quizzical smile.
"Oho!"
With his lips in this startled oval, Dossonville halted. His eyes contracted into slits as he said dryly, "So that was a ruse."
"If you like."
"Hello! it was well conceived. Tiens, tiens, tiens!" His eyes continued their scrutiny. "I have, perhaps, not done justice to your acumen. My compliments and my excuses."
He swung his bonnet in a long, awkward, trailing swoop across his feet. Barabant executed a bow of equal assurance.
Dossonville returned to uprightness with a snap of his heels, and a certain asperity rang in the next question.
"And why did you deem the experiment necessary?"
"Before intrusting my safety I prefer to reassure myself."
"You saw that at the cry of 'aristocrats' I sprang to my guard."
"I said 'the aristocrat.'"
"I understood, 'Arrest him, aristocrats!'"
The two men, Dossonville cool, Barabant amused, measured looks, until, dismissing the subject with a motion of his arm, Dossonville seated himself.
"Well, what do they say of me?"
Barabant, who did not intend to surrender his vantage, straddled his chair, rested his arms on the back, and, looking him magisterially in countenance, answered:
"Citoyen Dossonville, you seem to be a mystery. No one knows where to place you. You consort with patriots and traitors alike."
Dossonville, facing this accusation, appeared to reflect a moment.
"That's true. I do not hide it—from patriots." His voice gave a meaning inflection to the ending; then he added, irritably: "There are more ways than one of serving the nation. I repeat, leave me mine." He broke off. "Have you written anything? Give it to me."
Barabant extended the precious manuscript. He took it, but before spreading it upon his knee, he said: "After all, you are right. I have a way to convince you. You shall see. But first for this."
He began to read, with approval. "Good—good"; "very good"; "excellent."
At the end he brought his hand down upon his knee with a slap. "Tonnerre de Dieu, that is well put!"
Barabant, who was soaring in the seventh heaven, made a superhuman effort and forced back a smile. Dossonville, much amused, tapped him on the shoulder.
"Come, it is not a crime to be pleased with one's self."
"You think it will do?" Barabant stammered.
"Splendid! And now to convince this suspicious republican." He eyed him a moment, enjoying the surprise his next words would cause. "Suppose you return with me to Santerre."
Barabant, astounded at this acquaintance with his doings, dropped his jaw.
"So, do you think I would employ you without some knowledge of your actions?" He enjoyed for a moment Barabant's embarrassment. "Come, and Santerre shall reassure you." At the door he paused, cast a rapid glance at the impoverished fittings, and drew out his purse. "Republican or not, the essential thing is to dine." Then evading the young fellow's thanks, he led the way into the city.
It was now toward twilight. The streets were choked with laborers returning home. In the air was an unwonted stir, a muttering, defiant and eager, as the crowd discussed openly, with impassioned questions, the prospective attack on the Tuileries.
"It is for to-night, sure?"
"For to-night, yes, at the tocsin."
"It's true, is it, the National Guards are coming over?"
"They've armed the Marseillais."
"Who?"
"Pétion."
"Vive Pétion!"
Hundreds of National Guards fraternized with the crowd, reassuring them. Occasionally was to be seen the glimmer of a weapon, a scythe, a cutlass, or a half-concealed dagger. Questioners stopped them from time to time.
"Is it true, we are to attack to-night?"
Dossonville shrugged his shoulders.
"If the tocsin sounds you are. That is all I know."
From time to time there were new accessions in the streets; until, as the two approached the Rue St. Antoine, they were forced to beg their way at every step.
Dossonville, his head flung back, reviewed the throng from his great height.
"What a people! Is there anything they will not dare?" he exclaimed. "Brave people! Sublime people!"
They passed through a side street, deserted except for some straggler hastening toward the human torrent. Dossonville, in a burst of confidence, laid his hand on his companion's shoulder.
"That was good to see. I, Citoyen Barabant—I take nothing seriously. Men, individuals, are but blind little animals wriggling for a day or so. I have seen too much of selfishness, of wickedness, of deceits and hypocrisy, to be moved by human motives. Nothing really matters, nothing is serious. But when I see such a sight as that, a whole people rising with one accord, ah, then that thrills me; yes, I am moved!"
Barabant was silent, more perplexed concerning his companion than ever, and in this reflective mood he persevered, resolving to be on his watch for artifices and tricks. About the brasserie of the famous brewer the throng was massed so tightly that the two companions would have stuck thirty feet away, unable to turn, had not Santerre, from an upper window, perceived the lanky form of Dossonville. The moment his eye fell upon that appealing figure, he started up, as though awaiting him, and hurrying down-stairs, appeared at the entrance, where, by dint of command and abuse, he managed to open a passage, through which the crowd disgorged them.
Barabant, at a nod from Dossonville, remained in an anteroom listening to the compressed rumble of the crowd, that reached him through the open window on the warm, suffocating air. He did not have long to wait. Santerre soon reappeared, excited and red with the emotion communicated to his fleshy head. Dossonville, more tranquil, called him to them.
"I must take a message to the Bonnet Rouge," he said. "It is urgent. So I must leave you—only, I do not forget." He glanced at him, adding slyly: "Is there anything you care to ask of the Citoyen Santerre?"
Barabant, gulping down his confusion, cried: "Nothing."
"Good. Then you are no longer afraid you are dealing with an agent of the perfidious Pitt?"
Barabant seized the occasion to vanish through the side exit, carrying with him the memory of a chuckle.
Nicole no sooner had dismissed Barabant than she regretted the act. Her intuition had warned her that caprice was necessary to counteract her bonhomie, which might have produced in the young man an assurance of facile conquest. But, left to her own devices, to her astonishment she found the solitude oppressive. She made an effort to dispel the ennui by seeking Goursac; but no sooner had she perceived him than, apprehending the banter in which he was privileged to indulge, she halted and then turned away.
Toward evening, according to her custom, she joined Louison in search of supper.
"What have you done with your companion?" the girl asked at once.
"I dismissed him long ago," Nicole answered carelessly: from that quarter she welcomed attack. "A man interferes with the business."
"How did you meet him?"
"Why, I thought you knew! He has taken the room across from us!"
"Ah, indeed. He seems interesting." She took her companion's arm and said abruptly, "I have taken a fancy to him, so garde à toi!"
Nicole, not certain whether she spoke in jest or in earnest, abandoned uneasily the conversation, saying, "Where do we dine to-night?"
"At the Bonnet Rouge."
"Why there?"
"It is the rendezvous for the Marseillais. If there is to be an attack, we'll have the news."
"Do you think it will be for to-night?"
"Yes; there is something in the air that makes me think so."
Their way soon involved them in a network of dusky, gaping streets. On each side somber walls, peopled with dim, curious flecks of headgear, strained upward and back in a bulging effort to draw down a little more of the allotted strip of sky. The windows of taverns, on the ground floor, were beginning to redden and to cast faint streaks across the black, oozing streets; but the frugal inhabitants of upper stories, in deference to the price of candles, still hung on the sills, causing the evening to resound with the nervous chatter of window-to-window speculation.
At times the tension of conjecture and discussion would be broken by the bass voice of a passing laborer thundering forth,
Above the soprano of women's voices and the thin piping of children responded feverishly:
They found the cabaret beginning to fill up by twos and threes—workingmen for the most part: water-carriers divesting themselves of their barrels at the door with a sigh of contentment; wood-carriers, with relaxed limbs, slipping gratefully into the hard wooden benches; women of the markets, corpulent, quick-tongued, smelling of onion and garlic; erstwhile actors still with the strut of the stage; an occasional bourgeois in misfortune; a handful of gamins, impudent and witty—all discussing feverishly the projected attack.
The two girls, perceiving the congestion in the outer room, elbowed their way to where, by an inner door, a waiter of exceptional but broken height was scanning the crowd with an eye to orders.
"Well, Citoyen Boudgoust, what news?"
At Louison's question, he showed the palms of his hands, finally volunteering:
"Santerre is to send us word."
"There's room beyond?"
"You are going to eat?"
"Of course," Louison said impatiently, as he barred the way. "Besides, mon ami, don't you think we know what's going on?"
He allowed them to pass, grumbling, "Every one comes to talk; no one to eat."
In the farther hall the crowd was thinner and composed mostly of Marseillais and the National Guard, who looked up furtively, until half a dozen greetings removed their suspicions.
"Good evening, Citoyenne Nicole."
In her astonishment, she turned to find Geneviève.
"What are you doing here, child?" she cried.
"I am listening."
"You are no longer afraid?"
"We are to attack," the girl said proudly, and her eyes snapped with defiant ardor.
"Bravo, little one!" laughed Nicole. "Sit with us, then."
She turned to Louison in explanation.
"She is my protégée who is coming to me for lessons."
Louison nodded without surprise and turned her slow, restrained gaze on the room, while the eyes of Nicole, full of enthusiasm, leaped from group to group in rapid, eager scrutiny, resting finally on a knot of Marseillais near by. One man dominated these uncouth, bristling, living arsenals—a squat figure, sprawling under the grotesque shadows of the lamp, which further distorted his huge bulk and bullet head. One ungainly, crooked hand leaned in ponderous support upon the table; the other was flourished above him in frantic gestures, magnetic, absurd, comic, and terrible, as he harangued his comrades, who acclaimed his exhortations with shouts that burst above the ceaseless roar of the room.
"They are not very coquette," Nicole said critically, "and not very clean."
"Ah, but think how they have marched, all the way from Marseilles!" Geneviève cried, in protest.
"You know them, then?" Nicole asked, astonished at this side of the girl.
"Yes."
"And that bear of a man in the center, do you know his name?"
"Yes," she answered, with a slight disconcertion. "He is the Citoyen Javogues."
"He looks like an ogre."
"Wait till you hear him."
"Really!" answered Nicole, with a smile which threw the girl into confusion.
At this moment a rumble reached them from the outer room. Boudgoust, profoundly dejected, appeared, followed by the insouciant figure of Dossonville. Instantly the room was filled with cries.
"What news?"
"What news from Santerre?"
"We attack?"
"For to-night?"
Dossonville, facing the eager, breathless gallery, shrugged his shoulders, uttering but one word:
"Postponed."
A roar of rage and disappointment drowned his voice.
"Citoyens!" he cried, "I am but announcing the decision; I did not make it. The tyrants are intrenched. Mandat is in ambush at the Pont Neuf and the Arcade St. Jean. The leaders have decided the moment is unfavorable."
The storm of protests increased.
"More delay! Enough of waiting!"
"Mon Dieu, we are not cowards!"
"And the Prussians?"
"Hé, yes, are we to wait for the foreign bandits?"
"Javogues! Javogues!"
"Javogues, lead us!"
"Lead us, Javogues!"
Nicole felt through the child at her side a sudden trembling and drawing of breath. Then into the center of the suddenly quiet room lurched the squat figure, bareheaded, bare-armed, bare-chested but for a tattered shirt. He seemed rooted to the floor, like a mound transformed to human shape, quivering in the primeval mold and passions.
"Well, yes, I'll lead you!" The huge fist, describing a circle, crashed upon a table. "We're here to fight. We'll wait no longer. Hesitate and bandy words and deliberate whoever wants—we are not such! We have suffered and ached. We have been crushed to the ground, saddled to the earth,—we, human beings, like cattle, and we remember our wrongs. Fear? Neither God nor men do we fear. We came here, we, marching from Marseilles,—all the way from Marseilles,—to wipe out the accursed tyrants, to make things go faster, and, by God, they shall go!"
Nicole saw the hideous face transformed, lighted up with the glow of martyrdom. From lungs of leather there burst a welcoming response. Dossonville, facing the fanatic without a change of position, waited imperturbably the lull. Geneviève was breathing hard, in her excitement seizing the hand of her protectress.
"Bravo, patriot, you are eloquent!" came at last the calm answer of Dossonville. "But what can you do? March and be made into beefsteaks? The people, it is true, are hungry, but not a step will the sections move without Santerre. Will you march alone? What say you?"
"I say they are traitors who would halt us!" burst forth Javogues, glancing at the man who dared to jest with him.
"Meaning Santerre?"
"Meaning those who bear false messages. I don't like these manners. Who are you?"
"My friend," Dossonville said, with cool scorn of the threatening throng, "you are curious."
"Aristocrat!"
"Am I?"
"I say you are!"
"Indeed!"
"You will not answer?"
"Certainly! Citoyen Dossonville, at present lieutenant of the Section des Bonnes Nouvelles, in the past soldier, sailor, actor, innkeeper, a bit of everything except the law and the church. Citoyen Boudgoust," he continued, shifting his head just enough to bring into range the apathetic waiter, "before this fire-eater is at my throat, come, vouch for me!"
The hang-down head wabbled a moment on the bent shoulders.
"Yes, yes, a good patriot, Citoyen Javogues, and an eater of little aristocrats."
"As all good patriots should be!" retorted Dossonville, gravely. "There, citoyen, good patriots should not quarrel when there are so many tyrants to be digested. There is my hand—touch!"
Javogues stared at the proffered hand a moment stolidly, drunkenly, then deliberately folded his arms. A murmur of dissent gathered volume.
"Comrade, you are wrong!"
"Give him your hand!"
"Aye, touch together!"
Above the outburst the voice of Dossonville rose acridly.
"Dame! mon ami, you bring strange manners from Marseilles."
"I bring something else."
"And that is—"
"The way to tell a traitor."
"And that is—"
"By the look in his eyes!" Raising his fist, the Marseillais lurched forward with the angry shout of "Spy!"
A dozen men rushed to separate them, while the Marseillais, echoing the accusation of their leader, surged furiously forward. Louison and Nicole, with a common impulse, seized Dossonville, and in the confusion drew him into the hall and out by a rear entrance into the cool of the night.
"Thanks, my dears!" he cried, once free of the turmoil, nonchalant and flippant as ever. "It is always difficult to find the right word on which to retreat with dignity. You saved me the trouble. What! it is you, Louison and Nicole? Diable! if it were only one I could offer my eternal devotion—for a week."
"Citoyen," cried Nicole, reprovingly, "you were wrong to bait him. You have gained an enemy."
"On the contrary," Louison interposed, and strangely on her cold face there was a flash of admiration. "Citoyen Dossonville, you were splendid!"
"No, I was a fool," he said. "It is very stupid that some men must be at each other's throats from the first glance. Diable! I have a feeling this fellow will bother me some day. However, it will add a little interest to these quiet times. Au revoir—I must be off. If I stay I shall be falling in love with both of you. What good would that do? Thanks, and good night!"
In the distance his footsteps grew faint, while for a time the gay chorus of the Carmagnole told of his passage.
Nicole, leaving Louison, sought Geneviève, and, with a desire to reconnoiter, struck out through the now quiet Faubourg toward the Hôtel de Ville. There, all was animation with the arrival of the delegates from the forty-eight sections, assembling to deliberate upon a plan of action, while from time to time messengers passed like streaks down the steps and across the crowd, leaving the disturbance of their trail on the surface.
They passed along the Seine, where the river, as though, too, at the end of the day it sought its rest, lay still and black, shot across with faint reflections. They arrived at the Tuileries only to be barred passage by a patrol. Everywhere as they made the rounds they found the palace guarded and prepared; while a hundred other scouts passed ceaselessly to and fro, examining the frowning walls, grim in the shadow of night.
A dozen rumors were current: the palace was filled with Swiss and Chevaliers du Poignard; there were cannons masked at every point; the windows were protected with screens of oak; the court were dancing inside, drinking to the white cockades, as they had done at Versailles. Others affirmed that the city was to be set on fire from the four quarters; that the king had fled; that the National Assembly was to be arrested. Nicole, her curiosity satisfied and wearying of these wild rumors, returned home. At the Faubourg St. Antoine they found everything tranquil, and retired for the night. It was then half-past ten.
In their room Geneviève hazarded the question for which Nicole had waited with amused patience.
"Tell me, Nicole, what did you think of him?"
"Of whom?"
"Of the Citoyen Javogues. Was I not right?"
"He frightens me," Nicole said frankly. "He had the air of a butcher—a madman. Well, how shall I express it? He made me tremble, almost with a premonition of danger."
"Ah, you cannot understand him," Geneviève protested. "To me he is heroic!"
"What a little Jacobin!" Nicole said, with a smile. Without attaching further importance to what she considered the whim of a child, she added: "Well, mon enfant, here is your room. The half of it is yours for as long as you want it."
She passed to the window, casting a longing glance at the dark window opposite. Surprised at Geneviève's silence, she turned, a little provoked. The child was crying.
"Dear Geneviève!" she cried, springing to her side and taking her in her arms. "Don't try to thank me; I understand."
But the girl, through her sobs, murmured again and again, "Thank you, ah, thank you!"
"But it is I who am thankful," Nicole protested. "You bring me something to love and to care for. I was getting used to solitude, which is dangerous."
Checking her thanks, she snuffed the candle, stretching out upon the bed beside the girl.
"Yes, it is bad for one to be always alone," she said.
Geneviève timidly covered her hands with kisses.
"No, no, kiss me on the cheek," Nicole said. "And now, if you are going to obey, go right to sleep."
The child nestled closer, drawing Nicole's arm about her. The embrace seemed strange to Nicole, and, without quite understanding why, she sought to draw her arm away.
Boom! Boom!
All at once Nicole and Geneviève found themselves on their feet in the middle of the dark room. Through the open window there fell upon their ears a wild metal shriek, hoarse, furious, angry, that spoke of fire and of the dungeon—the boom of the tocsin.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Nicole bounded to the window. Below she beheld startled heads in white night-caps scattered down the length of the walls. As one dog wakes the pack, another and another bell took up the call, till from every point of the horizon broke forth the jangle and clang of the iron throats of Paris.
Below, a few tiny cries rose through the murmur. Across the roofs came the thin shrieks of a woman. Lights began to appear, forms clad in night-dress. Suddenly across the court tore into the night Barabant's frenzied voice.
"To arms! to arms!"
As though awaiting the signal, there burst upon the ear the rumbling of drums, the scattered popping of firearms, calls and answering calls flung from roof to roof.
"To arms, citoyens, to arms!"
A frenzy passed over Nicole. She leaned far out, and gathering her voice, echoed:
"To arms!"
She bounded back into the room, knocking over the chair, snatched up her cloak, bounded to the window to cry "To arms!" crashed down the stairs, dragging Geneviève, flung out of the blind passage, bumping and bruising her shoulders, down and out into the streets.
From every doorway figures shot forth and passed, running toward the north. The two girls, at top speed, joined the crowd. They passed a woman with a torch, whose hair stood out in long streams against the racing; la Mère Corniche hobbling along as fast as her old legs would take her; families of five and six running in packs, panting and silent, while beneath, above, about, from disgorging cellars, from loud-flung open windows, from every bell the city writhed in nightmare.
Distancing their companions, they arrived among the first before the brasserie of Santerre, where the Quinze-Vingts were assembling, forming quickly into ranks. From one window Jambony, the crier, in an enormous red cap, was feeding pikes to a hundred outstretched hands. The arrival of fresh torches caused the walls to loom up like lurid cliffs, sparkling in spots where a window-pane blazed back the reflection. From the windows flattened faces with black-encircled eyes looked down,—children too young, men and women too old, to survive in the press below: unhuman faces of unhuman beings, like a multitude of rats driven to shelter by the influx of a torrent.
Below, the black mass surged in, spattered, under the glow of the torches, with the red of the liberty-caps, while two banners hung like huge blurs above the tossing surface of pikes and weapons. The noise was deafening, the confusion beyond control. Men rushed in and out, their arms flung wide and high, bellowing:
"Death to the tyrants!"
"Death to the fat Louis!"
A slip of a girl, clinging on a window-sill, harangued the mob; a fishwife, astride her husband, comic and furious, beat the air and screamed to the crowd to dye the Seine red. Hags with threatening fists shrieked themselves into a frenzy:
"To the Tuileries! To the Tuileries!"
Some, foaming, overcome with their passions, collapsed on the ground. The anger of the mob against the queen gathered at times in bursts and shouts:
"Death to Mme. Veto!"
"Death to the Austrian!"
Unthinkable obscenities were coupled with her name and tossed from eddy to eddy. The Marseillais, gathering in a body, dominated the tumult with the swelling chords of their battle hymn that on their voices became a chant of carnage and a thing of terror.
It was more than a mob: it was the populace in eruption. All the human passions and emotions were there, the basest and the noblest. There were the scum—the lepers, the beggars, and the criminals diffused among the zealots, the fanatics, and the idealists. There were the frankly curious and the adventurous, and those with hatred and vengeance in their hearts. There was youth, warm-blooded and chivalrous, stirred by visions, and old age impatient to see the dawn—all hoarse and all clamorous to march.
The order did not come. For an hour they waited, trembling for the word. The uproar subsided a little. The torches began to drop out: there were moments of darkness when one could hardly distinguish the faces about. The cries to advance changed to inquiries. Boudgoust brought back the report that Pétion, the mayor, was a captive, held as a hostage in the Tuileries.
Santerre, the Goliath, passed among them, distributing hand-shakes, reassuring them, counseling patience. The Assembly would meet and summon Pétion to its bar and the court would not dare detain him. Some listened, half satisfied; others, the Marseillais specially, cried out for action. They waited still another hour and a half. The first outburst had seemingly exhausted the populace: they remained quietly, awed at the immensity of their daring. Many, tiring of the long vigil on foot, imitated Nicole and Geneviève and stretched out upon the pavements, forming little shallows throughout the length of the street. A few melted away to seek sleep or food. No more torches were lighted. The few that spluttered on became pale and effaced before the drab of the morning. An ashen glow stole over the street. Then the army that had huddled through the night roused itself, shook itself, gathered spirit and anger and again clamored to advance.
Santerre, besieged by the eager, hesitated. He sent off a band of pikemen and then the Marseillais, but the rest he held irresolutely.
Suddenly a cry started up from the outskirts of the crowd. A tall man was seen running toward them with outstretched hands, trying to pierce the crowd that closed around him. A great shout went up:
"The news! The news!"
On the outskirts a hundred hands were flung up, then a thousand. The sound of a mighty cry could be heard indistinguishable, rumbling, gathering volume, sweeping over the crowd.
"Pétion is free!"
"Pétion is at the Hôtel de Ville!"
Santerre hesitated no longer. He descended from his brasserie and gave the signal. The enormous mass started, moving swiftly, consuming its way like a glacier. A scullion, with the sudden converging impulse toward comradeship that now permeated the throng, sought anxiously for a familiar face.
A pikeman from a group, seeing his trouble, called out:
"Hé, comrade, you seek friends. We are your brothers. March with us."
In measure, as they swarmed toward the Tuileries, fresh reports came back. Mandat had been summoned. The artillery at the Pont Neuf had been withdrawn. Mandat was at the Hôtel de Ville. Mandat had fallen before the vengeance of the crowd.
They hastened forward and rolled into the Place de la Grève. It was then seven o'clock in the morning. There, where they expected the order to attack, they were compelled again to wait. When they clamored they were told that they were delaying for the Faubourg St. Marceau, which was to join them at the Pont Neuf. Then these hordes, who had passed the night in suspense, in the midst of rumors and counterrumors, sent up a great shout of anger:
"Treachery!"
The populace that could dare anything could not stand suspense. A panic was imminent; but firmer spirits began to exhort them. On all sides knots of men flung one of their number into the air, where, from the shoulders of a comrade, witty, brilliant, and magnetic, he calmed the crowd with laughter.
Nicole and Geneviève, circulating from group to group, were halted by a familiar voice, and beheld, aloft the giant shoulders of Javogues, the ardent figure of Barabant addressing the throng.
"Peace, good, kind, gentle, loyal citizens," he was saying mockingly, "you will disturb the royal slumbers. Why such impatience? The Austrian cannot see you at such an hour. You are forgetting etiquette!" A roar of laughter showed him his ground. "I assure you, aristocrats will not fight before breakfast, before they are shaved and powdered and dressed. Patience, my Sans-Culottes; we do not want to stab them in their beds; give them time to sleep and breakfast, that we may show them how Sans-Culottes can fight. They are not Sans-Culottes; only Sans-Culottes can fight with empty stomachs!
"For shame, citizens; one does not grumble in the face of danger. Look about you. The moment is sublime. You who have felled the Bastille, you who brought Capet back from Versailles—you are now to strike the great blow for freedom, and you grumble. What matters it if we have waited twenty hours or twenty days, if we may see such an event? Who would not rather die at such a moment than live in any age or in any condition the world has ever known? Citizens, the moment is sublime; be ye also sublime!"
He slid to the ground, amid uproarious approval, satisfied and elate. Javogues, the Atlas, bellowed out, "That's the way to talk; he is right! Vive la Nation!"
"Vive le Citoyen Barabant!"
Barabant, recognizing the voice of Nicole, turned, while the crowd, eagerly catching up his name, saluted it with cheers.
"Bravo the Parisian!"
The second voice was Louison's. The two girls, each armed with a cutlass, sent him their applause over the crowd. But, while the frank enthusiasm of Nicole inspired him, there was something in the tolerant smile of Louison that seemed to mock his elation. Before he could reach them, the crowd, abandoning the cries of treachery, exploded in anger at the Faubourg St. Marceau.
"Fine patriots!"
"What the devil are they doing?"
"We do not need them; to the Tuileries without them!"
"Give us news of them!"
"Citoyens, I'll bring you news," Barabant retorted. "A little patience and you shall know of the Faubourg St. Marceau."
He returned through the chafing multitude, and departed down the Rue St. Honoré as fast as his legs could carry him. At the Place du Carrousel the mob was besieging the entrance to the Tuileries, clamoring for admittance. As he hesitated, the gate was flung open and the mass, with the quickness of gunpowder seeking an outlet, crashed in. Barabant, all else forgotten, hurled himself forward in a blind endeavor to reach the court. He tripped and fell, and before he could gain his feet the mob had passed him.
There had been not a moment of hesitation. They rushed into the trap, heeding neither the windows, bristling with muskets, that confronted them nor the walls that hemmed them in. Leaping and shouting, they ran to the vestibule at the end. There they saw a mass of red that colored it from top to bottom—a mass perfectly ordered. It was the Swiss, drawn up line by line on every step, their muskets at aim, awaiting the word.
The first assailants stopped irresolutely, but the impetus of those behind swept them on, until the vestibule was consumed and the first ranks looked into the threatening barrels. Still no sound. The two forces, the machine and the monster, looked into each other's eyes, noting little details. The populace, gaining confidence, began to jest, saluting the soldiers with friendly greetings, inviting them to join them.
Some one in the mob, extending a long crook, hooked a Swiss and drew him into the vortex, amid shouts of laughter. They clapped their hands, laughing like children, and set to work at this new game. A second, a third, five Swiss, were thus fished out of the ranks without resisting.
All at once, from the balcony above, a voice cried:
"Fire!"
As the sea with an immense impulse recoils from an earthquake, there was a vast recoil in the mob, an exact explosion from the machine. The smoke, rushing down the vestibule, swirled into the air and lifted. The officer leaned curiously over the balcony and gave the order to advance. The red ranks moved down and over the inanimate mound; of all those who a moment before had laughed incredulously not one survived.
Outside, the mob broke and fled up the Place du Carrousel, recoiling from the horrid vestibule, where suddenly there formed a bubble of red, that grew larger and trickled over the garden, widening and assuming mass and shape. At times across the red, like a diamond meeting the sun, there ran a brilliant flash. At every flash men stumbled in their flight and pitched forward. Pell-mell into the Rue St. Honoré they ran, routed, but full of anger and enthusiasm.
At this moment the sections of the Marais swept in, gathered them up, and, burning with vengeance at the sight of their wounds, rushed on to the attack. Barabant, who had received a flesh-wound in the hand, had barely time to bind it up before he was swept again into the Carrousel.
Then a vast hurrah burst from them, a shout of relief and of battle. From the quais the guerrilla band of the Marseillais were rolling forward, formidable, grim, and unleashed. Suddenly their ranks parted and two tongues of fire lashed out; in the solid bank of the Swiss two gaps appeared. A frenzy possessed the assaulting mass. It flung itself forward, without method, attacking only with its anger. The Swiss reëntered the vestibule, issuing forth from time to time to deliver a volley.
Barabant, in the midst of the swirl, lost consciousness of his acts, swayed by sudden, unreasoning passion. He fired fast and faster, caught by the infection of his comrades, cursing, exhorting wildly, laughing; but his bullets, without objective, flattened themselves against the death-dealing walls. At times he saw, through the thick smoke, Javogues and his comrades dragging a cannon forward toward the barracks. At another moment there suddenly emerged out of the mêlée the figure of the two bouquetières.
Amid the swirl of smoke, Nicole appeared to Barabant's excited senses as a goddess exhorting them to battle. Her hair had tumbled, rioting, her dress was torn open at the throat, her bare arms were stained with powder and red with the contact of the wounded; and yet, as she loaded a musket, or presented it to a volunteer, or showed him the flashing walls, she laughed one of those laughs sublime with the indifference to danger and the joy of heroism that inflame the souls of those who hear it, and transform the wavering with the frenzy of sacrifice.
On the contrary, Louison, among all the confusion and the tumult, moved quietly, gathering the bullets from the fallen and returning them to her friend. Her face was calm, cold; her eyes sought everything and showed nothing; and though she moved incessantly on her quests, she was apart from all—a spectator.
Barabant, unable to join them, was carried step by step toward the barracks. Once he slipped in a pool of blood and went down, his companion falling across him. He called to him to rise, but the man was dead. A woman of the halles freed him.
A series of explosions almost hurled him back; the next moment the barracks, rent in gaps, were swept with a sheet of flame. The assailants, with a cry of triumph, hurled themselves into the palace, while the Swiss, forced up the staircase, broke and fled, pursued and shot down by the victors.
Through the apartments, shattering doors, overturning furniture, howling along the empty corridors, the mob crashed in, as the first victorious blast of a tempest, shrieking:
"À la mort! À la mort!"
One by one the flying Swiss were overtaken. Packs of the invaders leaped upon them, burying them from view, until, stabbed with a dozen useless thrusts, their bodies were flung with exulting cries from the windows; while as the foremost stopped to enjoy their prey, the herd swept to the front with hungry arms and the ever-rising shout:
"Death to all! Death to all!"
Barabant, racing ahead to save the women, soon found himself in front, running beside a Marseillais, who cried to him with the voice of Javogues:
"Keep with me, citoyen, keep with me! Leave the curs to the others!"
A Swiss, hearing them at his back, fell on his knees, shrieking for mercy.
"Leave him. Don't stop!" Javogues panted. Seizing Barabant's arm, he bore him down a side gallery, shouting:
"There he is! There he is!"
At the end of the corridor Barabant beheld a tall form disappearing at the head of a narrow stairway.
Up this they rushed, into the single outlet, a guard-room, only to find it empty. Javogues threw himself furiously against the walls.
"I saw him, I saw him; he is here somewhere!"
"Who?"
"Dossonville! He was among the Swiss. I saw him." He ran around the room, assailing it with his huge fists. All at once he gave a cry, and lifting the hatchet he bore, he sent a secret door crashing in.
"He is here!"
He hacked his way through and disappeared, thundering down the passage. Barabant, only half comprehending what had happened, remained a moment in perplexity. But the sound of women's cries startled him again to activity. He darted back into the current of the mob and gained the women's apartments. At the foot of the staircase an officer of the National Guard was crying:
"We don't kill women!"
"Spare the women!" Barabant echoed.
A dozen others took up the cry.
"The Republic does not make war on women!"
The mob, balked of half its vengeance by the firmness of a dozen officers, turned to desecration and pillage. Troops of women, like furies, swarmed through the royal apartments, tearing the beds to pieces, exulting, foul and crazed.
Barabant, sickening at the sight of unnamable excesses, retraced his way down the strewn galleries, heaped with overturned furniture, and tapestries pulled from the wall, spattered with blood and dirt. Heedless of the shouts above him, he passed down the vestibule and over the mountain of slain, suffocated by the stench and the horror of wide-mouthed corpses. Now that the crisis was over, his inflammable nature recoiled before the ugliness of the triumph.
While Louison and Geneviève had been drawn into the frantic mob which swept the palace, Nicole had remained outside, joining the hundreds of women who visited the wounded or sought, in agony, among the dead. She also, with a new anxiety, sped among the slain with a sinking dread before each upturned face.
All at once a familiar voice cried at her side:
"Help! help!"
The cry came from beneath the body of a Marseillais. With the aid of a fishwife she pulled away the corpse, discovering the shaken, limp form of the mountebank Cramoisin.
"Ah, mon Dieu," she cried, forgetting the rancor of the woman in the patriot, "are you wounded?"
"I—I think so."
"Where?"
"I don't know," he stammered, rising weakly to his feet. "Is it ended?"
"In thy stomach, I guess, my brave fellow!" the fishwife cried with rough scorn. "It seems to have failed thee!"
"You do not know him: he is a hero!" Nicole cried, ironically. "Wait a moment; we'll find the wound!"
With a laugh, the two sought to seize him; but Cramoisin, having recovered the use of his legs, escaped in a ludicrous, snarling flight.
Suddenly Nicole beheld Barabant stumbling forth from the vestibule. All coquetry forgot, she sprang to him with the cry:
"Barabant, you are wounded!"
He looked at his arm and saw it was covered with blood. He passed his hand over his face; a scalp-wound trickled a red stream down his forehead. He sat down while she hurriedly washed the wounds and bandaged them. When he essayed to rise, a dizziness made his step so unsteady that Nicole drew his arm over her shoulder, laughing at his feeble resistance.
"Allons, this is the hour of the women. I'll bring you back. Don't be afraid to lean on me!"
She put her arm about his waist and impelled him gently. He resisted no longer, and together slowly they moved homeward over the stricken field, amid the groaning and the silent.
He had a misty recollection of a phantasmagoric passage, of rapidly moving figures hideous with blood, of heads dancing on pikes above him, of stretchers bearing inanimate things, of rushing, floating women, of the sudden rumbling of drums, of companies swinging past him, of interminable streets, and of cliffs, mountains high, that gave forth shrieks of triumph. Then in the city, delirious with joy and sorrow, delirium, too, rushed through his brain, his head fell heavily upon Nicole's bare shoulder, and the will deserting his limbs, he slipped from her arms heavily to the ground.
When at last Nicole had brought Barabant to his room, she was very tired. Goursac, whom she had summoned to help her, knelt by the bed to examine the unconscious form. Every now and then he turned a questioning look upon the girl, as though to penetrate the indifferent attitude she maintained.
"Why don't you say something?" Nicole cried at last, her anxiety mastering her prudence. "Is it so serious?"
"A mere scratch," he grumbled; "nothing to make such a fuss over. If he hadn't been as weak as a woman—"
Nicole, reassured, smiled at his ill-humor, knowing the mood of old. Goursac, furious at such a reception of his sarcasm, turned on her angrily.
"You are like all the rest—just as stupid. Because a young fellow gets a scratch and you pilot him home, you call that a romance. You know well enough what that leads to!"
"That may be true; why shouldn't I have my romance as well as another?"
"You say that to plague me. You know that is not so!" he said impatiently. "Now give me a bandage."
Stooping, Nicole seized her petticoat; but finding it stained with traces of the combat, she dropped it, and calling to him to wait, passed through the window and across the gutter, swaying lithely against the roof. In a moment she returned with half of a sheet, which they quickly tore into bandages.
"There; with a little rest—a chance to recover some blood—the fever will abate!" Preparing a sling, Goursac jerked his head toward the bed and demanded: "You are not going to watch?"
"Certainly I am!"
"Then say at once," he cried point-blank, "that you imagine you are in love!"
"Goursac, my friend, you are ridiculous with your ideas," Nicole answered impatiently. "You know that the Citoyen Barabant arrived only yesterday. We are good comrades. That's all!"
"Yes, yes, yes!"
He wrinkled his lips in scornful unbelief, raised his shoulders to his ears, and disappeared, heavily, down the stairs, grumbling ironically, "A man lies to deceive others; a woman lies to deceive herself!"
A moment later he called back:
"Hé, above there!"
Nicole went to the landing.
"Is that you, the comrade?"
"Yes, old cynic."
"If you need me, stamp twice on the floor."
"Agreed."
"Return now to your—acquaintance."
Nicole, laughing, returned to the bedside. She placed her hand on the heated forehead, frowned, smoothed down the covers, arranged the discarded clothes, and, after a moment's reflection, departed over the roof to her room.
When she again appeared, she had removed all traces of the battle. She pulled a chair near the bed, loosened her hair, scattering it over her shoulders, and began to comb it out, unraveling the tangle with many grimaces and an oft-wrung "Aïe! aïe!"
Occasionally she consulted a pocket-mirror, then resumed the combing, humming to herself. Barabant, his forehead enveloped in white, his arm in a sling, lay with his head turned toward her, one arm escaping bare above the covers. She regarded approvingly the lithe muscles suggested under the soft skin, and, ceasing her humming, pronounced:
"He is well made!"
She leaned over the bed and opened the collar of his shirt, revealing the full throat.
"Tiens, he's as white as a woman."
She withdrew, and resumed her humming.
"But, Dieu merci, it's not a woman." She was taking up another strand when the stairs cried out and Louison entered. Nicole frowned and said curtly:
"Ah, it's you, is it? Who told you?"
"La Mère Corniche. How goes it?" she asked, indicating Barabant.
"Well."
"Are you coming to eat something?"
"No, I'm staying here."
"Is it so serious?"
"I don't know," she said, continuing her combing. "He pleases me."
Louison stood at the bed, looking down. "Not bad; he's interesting. I noticed he had good eyes."
Nicole stopped her combing, and a frown gathered above the childish cheeks, as she cried impetuously:
"Louison, no interference, do you hear? Or—"
"Or what?" The dark eyebrows arched slightly, but the deep eyes remained cold. Nicole did not answer. Louison returned to the contemplation of the young man a moment longer, then reluctantly rousing herself from her reverie, turned on her heel. Her eye, falling on Nicole, regarded her with a trace of amusement.
"Child!" she said, standing in the doorway, her face relaxing into a smile. "You have chosen the best moment, my dear: you are adorable!"
Nicole listened, immovable, until the last footstep had grown silent. Then drawing her lips together, she seized her knees with her hands, and thus curbed, her eyes fixed themselves in intense contemplation, while several times a sudden anger knit her features before she shook off the disagreeable emotions and sought the cool of the window.
At a rustling from the bed she returned quickly. Barabant had stirred slightly, but so as to throw his weight upon the wounded arm. She slipped her arm under him and moved him to a more comfortable position. This maternal solicitude, slight as it was, awakened a new emotion in her. She arranged his hair, and seeking hungrily for any further service, began to bathe the hot eyelids.
Barabant, under the gentle stroking, opened his eyes. The confines appeared to him vast and silent, the window far removed and small. The long August twilight invaded the room with the delicious promise of a quieter night, while from without the distant, scattered sounds of rejoicing reached his ears, through the corridors of insensibility, like the tinkle of soft music. He sighed contentedly and closed his eyes again.
Presently he said, turning his head a trifle, but without opening his eyes:
"Thou art really there, Nicole?"
The accent and the caress pierced to the depths the heart of the young girl, already stirred by the maternal impulse of the woman.
"Really here, yes."
But almost immediately, as though regretting the softness of the response, she added, in remonstrance:
"I have not given you permission to call me thou!"
"It is my gratitude that—that permits me."
"Ah, that is nice." She smiled with pleasure. "That was very prettily said."
"Nicole?"
"Yes."
"Place your ear to my lips; I cannot talk so far."
The girl, with a smile, divining the ruse, leaned over him. But Barabant making no sound, she withdrew, scrutinizing anxiously the hot face.
"Nicole."
"I am here."
Again she stooped, and this time so close that her hair swept his forehead.
"You are there?"
"Yes."
"I love you," he said drowsily.
"Oh, oh!" Nicole started back, blushing and amused; but looking down, she saw he had dropped again into the wanderings of delirium.
"He does not know what he says," she said, shaking her head. "Poor fellow!"
She watched him in his helplessness, and all at once she sighed; but it was a sigh that rose from the soul, and while it filled her heart, it passed on and awakened in her a famine of tenderness, leaving a longing for tears.
Motionless and perplexed, she stood staring down at the dim bed, her lips parted, her breast filling with deep breaths, until at last she turned reluctantly and sought the window, still uncertain, nor comprehending what was germinating within her.
The night was beginning; in the clear heavens the high moon was strengthening in luster at every moment. Across the stretch of window lights the sounds of revelry and rejoicing persisted faintly to her ears. The courtyard, deserted by the men, was hushed with the silence of fatigue. The laugh of a girl mounted at times, clear and playful, mingling with the deeper, good-humored protests of her companion. From a window a hag, chin in hand, followed the lovers with due interest. In another room a weary mother had fallen asleep with her baby still feeding at her breast. At other windows the women waited patiently the return of the men, bending mechanically over their knitting or crooning to the sleepy children. There, under the enduring, tedious night, Nicole stayed from minute to minute, pressing her clenched hand tensely against her lips; while within her breast beat tumult and a revolt against the slavery of women. She returned to the bedside, rebelling against this helpless man who drew her irresistibly from her independence.
"Nicole—"
It was Goursac calling, and she sprang furiously to the landing, rebuking him with a low: "Silence! he is asleep. What do you want?"
"If you are tired, I'll watch."
"No, no!" she answered angrily. The cry seemed to burst from her heart, threatened by the very thought of such exile.
She knelt at the bed hungrily, waiting jealously for an opportunity to ease the restless body, her revolt forgotten in the defense of her right to soothe and minister. She slipped her arm under his body, and drew his head upon her shoulder. A sigh of contentment rewarded her. He grew more quiet, breathing gentle breaths that disturbed her hair and fanned her throat. In the half-darkness she remained, with aching shoulder, holding him in her arms as though to defend him from all who would separate them. Several times, in an access of tenderness, she approached her lips to the unconscious forehead, but each time instinctively drew back from the surrender. She had a desire for tears, for laughter, for swift anger, that he should wake at last. She would have kept him there forever, weak and helpless, turning to her in trust and necessity. At times, with a sudden alarm, she asked herself what had happened, what could be these new emotions, until at last, in the disturbance and bewilderment of her soul, she saw the utter loneliness of her life, and the cry went up from her: