"Ah, mon Dieu, how unhappy I am!"
The full sun was beating into the room when Barabant awoke. His forehead was cold, his senses were sharp; but his memory struggled in vain to reconstruct the events of the afternoon. His arm confined in a sling brought back his wound, and Nicole, and the beginning of the tedious journey; beyond that a black wall rose up and shut out all vision. He turned over, calculating his strength, when, his eye traveling over the bedside, what was his stupefaction to behold Nicole stretched upon the floor. Her hands were pillowed under her cheek, where the long eyelashes showed sharply against the heightened color. She slept easily, the lips slightly parted as though smiling under happy dreams. Barabant watched her breathlessly, jealously putting off the awakening. But at this moment, as though aware of the intensity of his gaze, the girl opened her eyes, met the enraptured glance of Barabant a moment only, then sprang to her feet with a confusion which she sought to cover with a laughing "Good morning!"
"You have been here all night?" Barabant said, in astonishment.
"Why not?" Nicole noticed that he did not address her as "thou." She rearranged her dress and said with forced naturalness, "Do you think that is much to do for a patriot who is wounded?"
Barabant, displeased with the answer, made no reply.
"So you have decided to return to this world, citoyen?"
"Have I been delirious?"
"Do you remember nothing?"
"Nothing since—since the Place de la Grève." As this answer seemed to plunge Nicole into silence, he asked, "How did you get me here?"
"It wasn't difficult," she began more gaily. "I begged your way from block to block. Let me see; two water-carriers brought you half-way, then a coachman a block on his route, then another block on a litter, and finally a fishwife helped me to the end."
"You carried me?"
"Indeed, I am not a weakling; look at that." She extended her arms, laughing. "They are solid."
"And this?" Barabant touched the sling.
"Oh, that was the Citoyen Goursac."
"Who?"
"Your neighbor below, a brown man who buries his chin like this, and scowls. That reminds me, it is time he should see you."
"Nicole!"
"Well, what?"
"Not now; not just yet."
"Why not?"
"I wish to talk with you."
"The idea, as though I had nothing to do!" She raised her foot and stamped twice. "I have a desire to dine to-night, thank you."
"Where are you going?"
"I'm going to work." She picked up her possessions and made for the window, while Barabant cried excitedly:
"Nicole, I have not thanked you. Wait, let me thank you."
"Why?" She shrugged her shoulders. "I'd do that for any one."
Barabant raised himself on his elbow and threatened, half angrily: "Nicole, if you go, I'll follow you. I swear I'll follow you. I will. Look at me. I swear I will!"
"What good will it do you? I'll be gone."
She shook her head, and, deaf to his entreaties, disappeared; while Barabant, furious, fell back, baffled and perplexed, little suspecting the awakening that was taking place in Nicole.
When Nicole reached her room, she found Geneviève up and waiting.
"What are you doing, child?" she cried sharply, to cover her confusion. "Why are you here?"
"I—I am waiting," Geneviève stammered, "to see if I could do anything for you."
"There is nothing. I am going out now myself."
"What!" cried the child, opening her eyes wide. "You are not going to stay with the poor fellow?"
"There is no need. He is well."
"But I thought—" She stopped, in confusion, and then clumsily beat a retreat to the door. "I'll go now. I—I only wanted to be of service."
Nicole waited only long enough to be sure of Geneviève's departure before descending in turn. Her little room was too narrow; it choked her. She had need of the open span of the sky to think over the new emotions.
After an hour of unprofitable solitude, feeling the need of a confidence which would lessen the tension of her thoughts, she sought Goursac, beginning timidly with the question:
"And the Citoyen Barabant, how is he?"
"Why, he is still alive, clamoring for you like a lost child for his mother."
"Goursac, my old friend," she said, taking his arm, "be serious and gentle for once. I am unhappy, and I want to talk with you."
"Ah, you love him," he said bitterly.
"Yes," she said slowly, as though the revelation had just come, "I love him."
"Then why do you avoid him?"
"I am afraid."
"Of what?"
"Of loving him too much."
"I don't understand."
She tried to tell him a little of her emotions at the bedside—the wonder and the swift, acute joy of ministering, the longing to tend and own. Goursac, with a few questions, led her on. They were now in the Tuileries, a little apart from the quick throng, the swish of skirts, the laughter and the hum. At last he said:
"My little Nicole, listen. Love is not something that comes to us from the outside: it is a need within ourselves. We each have our functions in this world and our needs. At the bottom, what is strongest and best in woman is the maternal instinct. Listen to me! You fall in love when the need within you becomes too insistent. Any one of a hundred men can appeal to you. It is the moment and not the man. You knew the maternal instinct for the first time when you had in your keeping the Citoyen Barabant. You think that it is he that has awakened you. Not at all; all these emotions have been in you, dormant; it is they, not he, which enchant you. Voyons—you do not listen—Nicole!"
"That's true," she said, rousing herself from her reverie. Her eyes had been deep in the bright to and fro of the promenaders, but she saw only the room under the attic, and felt only the hot head on her aching shoulder.
"After all, you are thinking only of him, and I am a fool," he said. "Nothing that I can say will make any difference. You will learn, as others have learned, on the steps of experience. Out of some curious twist within you, in some strange way of reasoning you will decide for yourself."
"I suppose so," she said drearily. "But I wanted to talk it out; you are kind to me."
"I," he said calmly—"I adore you."
"Be serious."
"That is serious."
"Truly?"
"You know it."
"Why?" she said meditatively, but half believing him.
"You are young," he answered, looking steadfastly at the charming profile. "And to see you is good for the eyes. You are youth, and I have not been old long enough to be reconciled to age. But you don't believe me."
"Yes."
"No; at least, you do not understand."
She did not return home until nightfall, and then did not cross Barabant's window-sill, but contented herself with an inquiry as to his condition; nor could artifice and entreaty retain her longer. The next day she did not appear at all.
Barabant, who saw in her absence nothing but coquetry, was furious with her, with himself, with all that kept him to his bed. The lagging, still hours seemed doubly lagging and still with the memory of the charm which the presence of the girl had brought to the bare walls. Time and time his eyes sought the empty floor where he had surprised her asleep; and, conjuring up that delightful picture, he accused himself in his unreasoning irritation for not having simulated insensibility throughout the day.
Why did she thus avoid him? He remembered their first encounter with Louison. Was she jealous of her comrade, or was it simply calculation? That Nicole should think of playing the coquette annoyed him exceedingly. He had yielded to the fascination of this gipsy from the moment she had taken his arm in the gardens of the Palais Royal with the mischievous "Barabant, you are a lucky fellow," with which she had opened their comradeship. But this easy, pleasurable interest had been fanned into a passionate flame at the storming of the Tuileries, where, by her fire, her tempestuous beauty, and her careless laughter, she had impressed herself imperishably on his imagination; and later the thought of her bearing him home, of her nursing, and of her tenderness had invaded his heart.
With the rapture of the first unfolding romance he abandoned himself utterly to the thought of her, while retaining in his deeper consciousness, as undebatable, that limit of common sense which must separate the man of education and promise from a daughter of the people.
The thought was a part of his intuitions rather than his consciousness; for in his simplicity he believed himself utterly unselfish in seeking her, and was at a loss to understand why she should have changed.
Neither the afternoon nor the evening brought any sign of Nicole, nor during the next day could he obtain more than one glimpse of her, as she departed toward the flower-market. Recovered from his exhaustion, he set forth on the following morning, piqued and angry, resolved to find her and force an explanation.
He searched the Palais Royal and the Tuileries without success, and it was only after luncheon that, passing down the left bank of the Seine, he found her near the Conciergerie.
She was a little apart from the throng, strolling meditatively by the river, into whose swift flood her look was plunged. The half-depleted basket, overrun with flowers, dangled from her arm, while in her fingers she was turning a cockade without purpose. Against the hot August foliage and the buildings weltering under the sun there was something about her inexpressibly cool and refreshing to the eye.
The meditative abandon of her pose suggested all at once to Barabant a reason for her absence, and with this pleasing thought his anger yielded to the zest of the eager and confident lover.
So serious was her reverie that she was unaware of his approach until his greeting startled her.
"Am I so terrible, Nicole," Barabant asked, smiling at her confusion, "that you find it necessary to avoid me?"
She rallied quickly, and simulating indecision, exclaimed:
"Why, it is the Citoyen Barabant!"
Barabant brought his brows together and said, with a return of his exasperation: "Nicole, why do you avoid me?"
She shook her head.
"I don't avoid you; I do not seek you out."
"Nicole, you are playing with me."
She again shook her head.
Barabant, taking her wrist, repeated the assertion.
"Barabant, I do not play with you," Nicole answered earnestly.
"Then why have you avoided me?"
He waited for her answer, but she said firmly: "I cannot tell you."
"Assuredly she is beginning to love me," thought Barabant, and, well content, did not press the question. They strayed a little from the Conciergerie, and leaning over the bank, contemplated the river scenes below, following the fortunes of the languid fishermen, the antics of a kitten that romped over the flat decks herded together, and the glistening backs of boys splashing near the shore.
"Of whom were you thinking so seriously before I came?" Barabant asked, secure in his new confidence. He sought her face, hoping to surprise some trace of confusion.
"I was wondering how it would seem to have a mother," Nicole answered. She crumbled a flower and scattered the petals on the wafting stir of the air before she turned. "But then we might not agree. Perhaps I am lucky. What do you think?"
"Such reverie for a mother?"
"Oh, there are moments when one has such moods."
"I had hoped you were thinking of me."
"Really?" She lifted her eyebrows slightly. "And why?"
Her composure routed his agreeable theories and plunged him into perplexities. So, abandoning his confident attitude, he exclaimed vehemently:
"Nicole, what has happened? What is there—a misunderstanding, or what? Surely you will not tell me that it is natural for you to shun me so persistently. I will be answered!"
"I don't; I don't. I will not have you saying that!" She seized the opportunity of a passing party of muscadins—the dandies of the day—to offer her cockades. On her return, Barabant said more quietly:
"Listen to me, Nicole. You misunderstand me; I do not upbraid you. I want to thank you. I owe you much, and you give me no opportunity to tell you of my gratitude. That is what vexes me. Voyons, Nicole, we had begun so well!" He leaned closer and said mischievously: "Oh, if I had known you would leave, I would have remained unconscious all the day. I've cursed myself ever since."
He laughed, and growing bolder as he perceived she listened without displeasure, he poured into her ear, in one breath daring, in another shy, a thousand and one of those vague, delightful half-confidences which in the imagination of the lover awaken as naturally as the flowers open to the sun.
Nicole could not but listen. She assembled a bouquet and pressed her face against it to screen her pleasure from his avid scrutiny. From time to time she turned, and looking him full in the face, sought to read there the true value of his words. But almost immediately she would turn with a wistful smile of unbelief. At length she checked him, saying, with reluctant gentleness:
"Enough, Barabant. Your imagination runs away with you. You do not know your own feelings."
Barabant, borne on by the ardor of his emotions, retorted point-blank:
"And you, do you know yours?"
At this sudden challenge, Nicole had a moment of confusion, during which she answered at random:
"I?" But immediately regaining her composure, she added, "Perfectly."
"You evade my question."
"If you begin like that, I warn you I will not listen. Besides, I am neglecting my cockades."
She unslung her basket and again accosted the crowd. Barabant, after the first outburst of expostulation, waited moodily, leaning against a tree, his gaze lost in the current. The moment Nicole was assured of his abstraction, she hesitated no longer, but slipping through the throng, quickly gained her liberty among distant streets.
She knew that the evasion was unwise, exposing her to his judgment either as a coquette or as fearing to betray her true feelings—opinions which she did not wish him to entertain. She had fled, but not by calculation. She had again avoided him, and yet she scarcely understood why. New emotions had awakened in her a commotion that disturbed her whole theory of life.
Before, with happy tolerance, she had passed along the weary road of poverty, shrugging her shoulders at hunger, meeting adversity with a smile, expecting two or three attachments, not deep; delightful while lasting, sharp and saddening when broken; but, sad or sweet, not to be regarded too seriously,—the lot of life.
She had, therefore, welcomed the coming of Barabant with the pleasurable anticipation of a delightful comradeship. That she could retain him, or, in all probability, would care to retain him, beyond a certain term never occurred to her. As to the question of marriage, it did not for a moment enter her head. For her it did not exist.
A sigh drawn from her soul as she stood by his bed had dissipated all that, and discovered to her immense longings, womanly, motherly necessities which she had never realized before and which she imperfectly comprehended now. She perceived him no longer as a comrade, but as the new need of her awakened nature.
She had imagined love as impassioned, headlong, and impetuous, and, in the place of this ideal, she felt only the confident, weak appeal of Barabant to her ministering tenderness. The sensation was acute, poignant, disturbing; the happiness that had possessed her then was too big, too strange; it frightened her. She feared such a transforming, all-consuming love. To give herself utterly thus she felt, in her intuitions, would mean only disaster. So she fled from herself, trying to stifle that immense emotion to which she had no right,—so fraught with peril. So when, through all the rumble of sound and the ceaseless rabble of the boulevards, there returned the silent room under the eaves, and the feverish smile that answered to her soothing touch, she incessantly cried to herself:
"No, no. I would love him too much. The end would crush me."
Little vagrant of the people, she knew well what that end inevitably must be.
Barabant, baffled and incensed at Nicole's desertion, vowed that he would be through with such a coquette. Where pride begins there is a limit to gratitude, and that limit she had overstepped. He washed his hands of her. So, having decided—irrevocably decided—that Nicole had removed herself from any interest of his, and that it was a matter of indifference to him whether or not he saw her again, he determined to bring her to reason by paying attention to Louison.
Accordingly he contrived to meet her in the passageway the morning after his unceremonious desertion by Nicole.
"Salutations, Citoyen Barabant," Louison cried. "No luck this morning. Nicole has already left."
"Nicole is out of the question," he retorted.
"What!" Louison opened her eyes in astonishment.
"I say, we have nothing to do with Nicole," he replied coolly. "Where are you bound?"
"To the flower-market."
"I understand the route is dangerous at this time of day."
"Exceedingly dangerous."
"Then I had better accompany you."
"I think you had."
With this light introduction, they set out through the stirring city, greeted by the slamming of opening shutters, and escaping the clouds of dust that rose from the brooms of concierges. Louison was the first to speak.
"Well, comrade, and how goes it with you?"
Barabant affected ignorance.
"What, is it not serious with you and Nicole?"
"Serious is a big word," he answered, resolved not to yield an inch.
"I see, a little interest, but not—not the grand passion, violent and sacred!" She added, with a false sigh, "Poor Nicole, it is serious with her."
"Of course."
"I know it."
"You imagine it."
"I know it by one sign: she is jealous. There you are!" She laughed. "She is always jealous of me when it's serious. This time, though, there is no cause. I shall not interfere." She placed a flower to her lips and shot a quick glance up at him. "Though I met you the first."
"Do I count for nothing—or my preference?"
"Nini!" She shook one finger slowly back and forth. "Let us talk of other things. I might unconsciously break my promise."
The air grew fragrant as they entered a square blotted out with tents. Masses of red and pink, of white and yellow, met the eye through sudden lanes in the petticoat crowd.
"Leave me now to my bargaining," she said. Stopping in the perfumed alley at a tent, where the swinging sign-board bore the name la Mère Boboche, she cried tartly: "Good morning, citoyenne. The flowers are very stale this morning."
A thin, bent woman turned her one good eye, and recognizing a daily opponent, rose, drawing in her lips and nodding.
"Eh, they are dear this morning, but you have brought your muscadin. You can pay well to-day after the way you cheated me yesterday."
"He is my brother," Louison said coldly, turning over the flowers.
"Oui dà!" La Mère Boboche dropped an anxious glance at her counter. "Isn't he handsome, though, her muscadin? What arms, what a chest, eh? Solid that!"
Louison, observing that Barabant was uneasy under this chaffing, was about to interpose when a shrill voice rose in taunt from the opposite stall.
"What a monster of immorality! Allons, la mère, it's time you forgot such things."
Instantly the two enemies let loose at each other floods of vituperation.
"Listen to the evil tongue!"
"Hark to the old hen, what a cackle!"
"Corrupter of youth!"
"Cheat!"
"Impostor!"
Louison, profiting by the outcry, selected her flowers and escaped the fray.
"Now for some white ones and I am done. Aïe, what a jam!"
She took his arm, and as they entered the press of the main alley, once or twice was swept up against him with great force.
"Pardon; aïe, aïe, pardon! What a scramble this morning!" She was swung face to face with her protector, her eyes matching his in height. They freed themselves and reached another shop.
"Thanks, citoyen; your arm is strong."
Louison, giving a look of admiration at his limbs, began her bargaining. Barabant, though aware of the artifices, resisted weakly the direct attack. With a new interest he studied the liberty-cap that flamed in the black, sinewy wave of her hair. She was dressed in a yellow bodice, falling to a short skirt of light-blue fustian. The ankles thus revealed were shapely, and attracted the eye with their bright bit of red stocking. He began to ask himself if she were not really beautiful, as he watched the figure, unusually erect, every motion of which was made with grace and ease.
Louison, observing Barabant's study, from time to time turned her head to send him a smile over her shoulder. Occasionally she frowned and, as though to discourage his examination, shook her head.
Barabant forgot the curious impression she first had made upon him. He saw only a face with great capabilities of expression: mobile, flexible, obeying the capricious thought. The eyes more than ever arrested his attention and baffled it. They opened to him a way; but when he looked it was as though penetrating into a vast darkness.
"Why do you look at me so?"
Barabant recovered to find Louison at his elbow, her purchase made, regarding him with amusement.
"You mystify me," he said frankly. "There is something about you I cannot place. What is it?"
She shook her head.
"Don't. Besides—Nicole."
"You have been very solicitous to leave me to Nicole," he said, with a smile. "You choose excellent means to gain your end."
He had expected to catch her confused and blushing. Instead, she discovered a row of white teeth, and nodding her head, said:
"Eh, you are not so slow after all." Before he could reply, she exclaimed, "Hello, there's mama!"
She indicated a wig-maker's, where, on the door-step, a woman of about thirty-five or-six was sitting, carding a wig. Despite the difference of ages, Barabant noticed a similarity in the color of the hair and in the span of the eyebrows.
"Good morning, mother!"
The woman raised her head, but as her glance reached them started back, as though from a feeling of repulsion, and immediately dropped her head.
"Thank you, I am well," Louison cried mockingly. "Good day, mother, we can't stop." She turned in perfect good humor to Barabant. "There's a model mother for you; no trouble at all!"
"And your father?" Barabant inquired, as much struck at her philosophic attitude as at the maternal indifference.
"There's the trouble, voilà." She held her thumb-nail against her teeth and clicked it. "She has never been willing to tell me his name." She shrugged her shoulders. "That's stupid, isn't it? Why not?"
Barabant asked her curiously how long they had been parted.
"Since I was five years old. I only remember some dreadful scene at home,—I don't know what,—and all at once her manner changed to me. The next day she drove me out."
"At five?"
"Nothing extraordinary in that," Louison answered, surprised at his astonishment. "Ah, you do not know our Paris. She married soon after; perhaps it was for that, but I think not." She was silent a moment. "I think she discovered something about my father: that he was an abbé or an aristocrat."
"And you?"
"I begged. I found a corner in the cellar at la Mère Corniche's. You have never been in that pleasant abode?" She made a wry face. "There are rats; you don't get much sleep. Then it smells bad and it is black; though of course at night that makes no difference. I did not stay there long."
"What did you do?"
"Oh, I passed from corner to corner." She stopped in the square and seated herself on a bench. She emptied her flowers and held them out to Barabant. "Hold these while I make my cockades. I passed from family to family. I was well treated. They gave me a crust or a bone, and let me crawl into a corner at night. Of course I worked. It was interesting!" She wove the flowers deftly into cockades, taking them from his lap, their hands brushing each other from time to time. "Does that amuse you? Good. Then I'll continue. At ten I began to sell flowers, and then they treated me better—I shared meals."
"What a life! It must have been rough at times?" Barabant asked the question not without a mixture of curiosity in his pity.
"Yes, at first." She returned thoughtfully over her history. "But I stabbed a fellow who was annoying me. He lived, but the result was just as good. They are all afraid of my temper, and there is no protection like that." She rose, having finished the cockades, and faced him with a smile in which struggled a temptation. "You know I have a temper; oh, but a temper—a temper to make your hair stand on end!"
"I can believe it," Barabant said, studying her.
"Would you like to see?" she asked mischievously.
Without waiting a reply, she halted, caught her breath a little, and drew back. The mouth dropped open, the eyes fixed themselves. Then by the sheer power of her will she banished the blood from her face. The lips closed in a thin, cruel line, the nostrils dilated, while in the eyes glowed such malignant, tigerish hatred that Barabant, with an oath, sprang backward, placing the bench between them.
Immediately a low laugh rang out. The features changed from the hideousness of wrath to a look of amusement, and Louison, again erect, sidled up to him with a smile lurking in the corners of her lips.
"Did I frighten you? I like to do that." Her face had regained its composure, but it was a cold constraint; she was still pale from the force of the emotion. "It is so amusing to frighten people. You see, I am able to protect myself."
"That I can believe," Barabant cried, finding his voice. "It is unpleasant!"
"Don't be frightened; I reserve that for my enemies. I know how to please, also."
She laughed, amused at his horror.
"And now I must get to selling my cockades. You can return with me only as far as the Seine. A companion such as you, you understand, would never do; it would not be professional."
Arranging her cockades in the basket, which she transferred to her arm, she retraced her steps.
"Ah, there's mama again," she exclaimed, as they neared the wig-maker's. "Let's see if she'll greet us more cordially."
Suddenly she stopped and, with a gleam of mischief, caught his arm.
"I have an idea. Follow me. I'll make her speak."
They approached the woman on the step, who, after the first quick glance, abased her head without further recognition.
"Good morning, mother."
The woman continued silently to card the wig.
"Eh, Mother Baudrier! It is I, your daughter—Louison. You won't answer? Good-by, then." Louison turned as though to leave, calling back: "By the way, I've discovered my father."
The woman, with a cry, staggered to her feet, and, choking for utterance, fell back against the house; while in her eyes was the wild light of abject terror. Then perceiving by Louison's mocking laugh that it was a trick, without a word she gained the doorway and tottered into the house.
Louison, amazed and perplexed, remained fastened to the ground.
"Bon Dieu," she said at last, thoughtfully, "extraordinary! Who could he have been?"
Barabant echoed the question, while the memory of the scene sank into his mind, and with it a silent resolve to investigate the mystery further.
Barabant spent the remainder of the morning in rambling through the markets, skirting the shores of the river, seeking everywhere the thoughts of the people, listening to their ambitions, their desires, and their hopes. Toward noon he drifted among a throng of masons who, dispersing languidly over blocks of stone, were crowding into the nearest café.
"Salutations, citoyens!" he cried to them, according to the custom of free greetings that obtained. At the sight of the sling he still wore they hailed him warmly, asking:
"You got that at the Tuileries, citoyen?"
"Why, I know him," one suddenly exclaimed; and pushing to the front, he cried, "You are the Citoyen Barabant who spoke so well in the Place de la Grève." He turned to his comrades: "Aye, he can talk, too."
"Bring him in!"
"Citoyen, eat with us."
"Yes, join us, comrade," echoed a swarthy Picard, throwing his arms about Barabant, who, nothing loath, answered:
"Gladly, citoyens."
They took possession of a corner in the café, calling the other occupants—two coal-carriers and a seller of lemonade.
While the soup was devoured one or another would turn to Barabant with a wink or a laugh, crying:
"It was glorious, eh, the taking of the Tuileries?"
"We fought well—the Sans-Culottes."
"The fat Louis was trembling that day!"
As they fell to eating their long loaves of bread, spread with cheese and washed down with an execrable mixture of wine and water, groups of two or three sauntered in, to smoke and discuss, among whom Barabant recognized the Marseillais who had borne him in the square. Javogues, greeted uproariously, in turn perceived Barabant.
"Why, it is my little orator!" he cried, and was advancing with open arms to infold him in a bear-like hug, when his eyes encountered the sling. "Mordieu," he exclaimed, "you were wounded!"
"Slightly."
Contenting himself with a wring of the hand, Javogues settled his body into a seat opposite, exclaiming: "There is a patriot, citoyens; I'll vouch for him!"
A chorus of grunts and a bobbing of heads showed Barabant the value of such an indorsement. Across the table his companions cried to him:
"He's a terrible fellow, eh, the Citoyen Javogues? No hesitation about him."
"That's the kind of men we want!"
They finished eating, and sprawled back to discuss.
"What I want to know is, where are we going?" Javogues demanded.
"We are going nowhere; we are rooted."
"The Convention does nothing but discuss."
"What's the use of overturning the throne, after all?"
"We must have the Republic!"
"What say you, Citoyen Barabant?"
"I say no step backward!" A lull gave him the attention of the room. "We must advance or perish. If we lack in daring, we deserve to perish. The Revolution, comrades, as I see it, is not against an unworthy king or any king: it is to reconstruct society. Citoyens, there is but one true end: the Nation must be one family. No more classes, no more titles, no more king, no more first estate, no more third estate. We are brothers, brothers all in one family—France!"
"There's the word!" Javogues cried, amid the salvo of glasses and bravos that acclaimed the speaker. "And out with all lying, plotting priests!"
A chorus approved.
"Right!"
"That's it!"
"Now you're talking!"
"Curse the blackcoats!"
"What has kept us down all these centuries? What? Tell me that! The Church! What has been the ally of the aristocrats? The Church! What taught us to be content with our lot, with fetters, with a crust, with the yoke of taxation? The Church!"
"Aye, the Church!"
"Down with it!"
"Down with the lie!"
"Bah, the Church! the Church! I too was fool enough to believe in it." Javogues swept his huge fist over their heads, and crashing it upon the table, shouted, "There is no God!"
A few mumbled approval, more laughed, while one voice cried:
"There he is again, with his God!"
"I tell you, it is with such superstitions that they enslave us!" Javogues drew back, defiant and aroused, and assembling his anger, he thundered again, as though to bear down all opposition, "There is no God!"
The laughter increased, while another scoffer cried:
"Well, if there is, he does us little good."
To this all agreed. Barabant, smiling, added:
"Citoyen, one thing at a time. Let us depose Capet first."
They arose amid laughter, Javogues's protests lost in the confusion. Barabant, impelled to enthusiasm by the ardor of these laborers, opened his arms and exclaimed:
"Comrades, when Frenchmen are united, we fear no foreigner. What nation has ever fraternized as we? We all are brothers, all working for the great end. When we grumble at delays, let us not forget what the Revolution has made us!"
Then the voice of Javogues arose:
"Brothers, before we separate, let us embrace!"
With one impulse, such as countless times animated the populace in these days of exaltation, the group fell into one another's arms. Javogues, extending his hands covered with soot, exclaimed:
"Glorious emblems!"
Barabant echoed the cry, but as they moved off he surreptitiously brushed away the stains, asking, to distract his companion's attention:
"And Dossonville, did you get him?"
"He escaped—for the time."
"Are you sure it was he? Did you see him again?"
"What difference does it make whether I saw him or not?" Javogues answered impatiently. "I know he was there."
"How?" Barabant asked, in astonishment.
"By the look in his eyes the day I met him. That is all I need to tell an aristocrat!"
Barabant, seeing the impossibility of swaying the fanatic by reason, kept silent until they parted.
In the Rue Maugout, la Mère Corniche cried to him from her tenebrous sentry-box:
"One moment, citoyen." The window-hinges spoke and a shadowy head appeared. "There's a tall fellow above in your room."
"In the uniform of the National Guard?"
"That's it."
Barabant, who had left Javogues too recently to derive any pleasure from a visit of Dossonville, was hastening away when again the querulous voice halted him.
"Not so fast, citoyen."
"Well, what? I'm in a hurry."
"You've seen the Citoyen Marat?"
"Marat?"
"What! you've not presented your letter?"
"Oh, my letter!" Barabant cried, and hastily covering his mistake, said: "But that was days ago."
"You didn't forget to speak of me?"
"Come, now, la Mère Corniche, I'm not an ingrate!"
"And what did he say?"
"It brought tears to his eyes."
"Truly?"
"Pardi! The Citoyen Marat has a heart."
Barabant, on the staircase, congratulated himself on his escape from a bad position, little realizing the danger of the present one, and excusing the subterfuge on the light pretext of giving pleasure to the old woman. He hurriedly determined to say nothing to Dossonville of his danger, preferring first to question him.
Dossonville, the greetings over, announced his purpose with the question:
"Well, young pamphleteer, what have you ready?"
Barabant replied by tapping his arm.
"I see,—at the Tuileries?"
"You were there, of course?"
"What Frenchman wasn't?"
Barabant, noticing the equivocation, pressed him.
"With what section, citoyen?"
"I was with no section."
"Within or without the Tuileries?"
Dossonville rose up.
"Again! I thought you were convinced at Santerre's."
"You do not answer my question," Barabant insisted.
"Why do you ask it?"
"Because, Citoyen Dossonville, there are those who claim to have seen you among the defenders."
"What's that? Who says that?" At once Dossonville was all alertness.
Barabant repeated, adding: "If it is so, citoyen, no matter for what reasons you were present, you cannot ignore the danger you run if recognized."
As though to confirm the warning, the stairway suddenly gave out the hurried fall of feet, the door opened, and Nicole appeared, breathless and frightened.
"Citoyen Dossonville," she cried, "I come to warn you! Javogues is below!"
Dossonville threw a glance to the window, his hand going to his pistol. Then correcting himself, he said:
"So this is your trap, is it?"
"I am not a spy," Barabant disclaimed indignantly. "You have an escape by the roof; the gutter is solid; once opposite—"
"Yes, yes," Nicole added; "pass into my room, through the hall, and out!"
"You mistake me," Dossonville interrupted. "I have nothing to fear. Go to the landing. They may stop on the way."
Barabant obeyed. Dossonville, turning his back, snatched a paper from his redingote, rolled it into a ball, and tossed it into the gutter.
He looked a moment at the astonished girl, then shrugging his shoulders, he committed himself to her mercy with a wave of his hand. Already from below came the rush of feet. With a sudden inspiration, Dossonville divested himself of his pistols and sword, laying them conspicuously on the bed. Then retreating as far away as the room permitted, he seated himself and folded his arms, facing the horrified girl with a calm smile, as though to say:
"Dispose of my life!"
Nicole, struggling between her patriotism and her womanly instincts, heard Barabant calling from the landing:
"Who is there?"
"Javogues."
"What do you seek?"
The next moment half a dozen Marseillais stormed into the room, while Javogues, at the head, shouted:
"When he moves to escape, shoot him down!"
But on the instant Dossonville, erect and holding out his hands, cried:
"I am unarmed; my weapons are on the bed. I submit. There is no need of murder. What is the accusation?"
Javogues, baffled at the turn, still greedily covered the prisoner with his pistol, but his face showed indecision and the longing for a pretext.
"Lower your pistol," Dossonville continued calmly. "Citoyen Barabant, I call you to witness that I surrendered willingly and am now under the protection of the Nation. On what charges do you, without warrants, arrest an officer of the National Guard?"
Javogues unwillingly dropped his weapon. But immediately, his anger rising at being so thwarted, he advanced and, as though to crush his enemy, thundered out:
"Dog of an aristocrat! I'll tell you. I arrest you for firing on the Nation from the Tuileries."
"What, Citoyen Javogues!" Barabant cried indignantly. "If you have taken this step on the evidence you gave me, I declare it an outrage!"
One of the band spoke up:
"I saw him, too,—I, with my own eyes,—firing on us with the Swiss."
"Citoyen, you are mistaken," Dossonville replied. Then realizing the danger he ran, he continued rapidly, "At what hour?"
"Nine o'clock."
"At nine you have said!" Dossonville cried triumphantly, extending his arms. "Citoyens, I demand to be taken at once to prison. The moment such an accusation is made I insist upon my right to vindicate myself. At nine o'clock I was in the presence of the Citoyen Marat. Take me to the Abbaye and let the Friend of the People answer for me. Citoyen Barabant, I shall need you too."
The effect of that powerful name was tremendous; even Javogues was stunned at the sudden counter, and sullenly gave the order to descend. Even Nicole, tortured by the crisis, remained still in doubt. She made a step forward as though to reveal what she had seen, but meeting the eye of the prisoner, she halted before its eloquence, and, bowing her head, allowed them to pass. Dossonville signaled Barabant to place himself behind him, and thus they plunged down the pit, where twice Barabant thought he caught the sound of a chuckle. But when they emerged into daylight, the face of Dossonville remained inscrutable.
At the prison of the Abbaye they entered without difficulty. There the gate stood open day and night. At the desk, when the accusation had been read and the alibi announced, Dossonville extended his hand to Barabant and said:
"Thanks, citoyen. You need trouble yourself no more."
"No more!" Barabant exclaimed, in astonishment, for he had expected to testify to the meeting with Santerre.
Dossonville smiled grimly and, with a curious twist of his back, said:
"My back itched a little in such company, especially in that devil's descent of yours, where little slips might occur. You were necessary to my peace of mind! Thanks, citoyen."
Then, as he was about to be led away, he turned to the turnkey and cried rapidly.
"Citoyen, it is useless to disturb the good Friend of the People. He will pardon me if I used his name to insure a hearing before a properly constituted court of justice." Then with his silent, parted grin, he added, "My true defense I shall present at the proper time."
He disappeared in custody, not before he had sent a glance of malicious enjoyment toward his enemy, who, astounded, did not immediately recover. When he did, it was with the rage of the wounded lion suddenly surprised by the trap.
"Holà above, Barabant."
"Holà below, Goursac."
"Come down."
"What for?"
"Collenot is condemned. We're going to the execution."
"What, at eight o'clock at night?"
"Immediately. I am just back from the trial."
"I'm coming."
The Revolutionary Tribunal, inaugurated two days before, had deliberated ever since upon the fate of Collenot d'Agremont, seeking to fasten on the King and the Court the onus of the battle of the Tuileries. But beyond Barabant's desire to see the execution of this first victim of the anger of the Nation, was his curiosity to witness the second installation of that strange machine which had carried the name of Dr. Guillotin beyond the boundaries of France.
"And your Nicole?" Goursac asked when Barabant had joined them. "Why don't you bring her?"
"She's not in her room."
"You called her?"
"Yes, yes." Barabant, not wishing to discover their estrangement, hastened on: "Did Collenot implicate the Court?"
"He would say nothing. To do him justice, he was very firm."
"And the Tribunal?"
"Impressive. The people were awed. The judge pronounced an eloquent harangue,—they always do." He flung out his arm and repeated sarcastically: "'Victim of the law, could you but read the hearts of your judges you would find them crushed and saddened. Go to your death courageously. The Nation demands from you nothing but a sincere repentance.'"
"That's well put!"
"Repentance—and your head!" Goursac amended sarcastically. "What an absurdity!"
"Not at all," retorted Barabant, disciple of Rousseau and the sentimentalists. "The Nation mourning and forgiving its enemies, even when pronouncing sentence, is a spectacle, I say, that is sublime."
"Bah! What good is sentiment when you lack a head? No, no. These grandiloquent harangues of mercy and advice disgust me. They are nothing but self-advertisement. If I were a judge, I'd say:
"'Collenot, my friend, the Nation has proved you guilty; I pronounce upon you sentence of death; for further details consult Monsieur de Paris. Bon voyage!'"
"And the guillotine, Citoyen Goursac: do you find it insincere to despatch an enemy with the least pain?"
"Ah, the guillotine! There is a tremendous advance in human thought!" Goursac exclaimed, without deigning to open an argument. "There is something to be proud of. I foresee great innovations from this simple invention. To have learned to suppress human life painlessly is a true sentimental advance. We shall go further."
Barabant, seeing that he was started on his theories, said good-humoredly:
"Well, what next?"
"The day will come when society will regard it as a crime to allow children to grow up who are hopelessly destined to suffering—such as weaklings, monsters, hunchbacks, and the other deformed. The State will suppress them."
His companion groaned in horror.
"More than that," Goursac contended, "the day will come when the aged, the infirm, the decrepit, the mortally stricken, will be painlessly released from their suffering. Yes, death, when inevitable, will be made instantaneous, and society will approve."
"And how soon do you expect this magnificent idea to fructify?" Barabant asked scornfully.
"In about two thousand years," Goursac answered, with a hitch of his head. "That is the time necessary for an idea to conquer society."
"My dear friend, you are either joking or mad."
"The condition of prophecy is to be scorned," the theorist said dryly. "You remember Cassandra."
They entered the Place du Carrousel, where the guillotine, whether by conscious or unconscious irony, was established under the frowning shadows of the abode of kings. The dim square was hidden by a loose, shifting network of variegated colors dominated by the bright flecks of countless liberty-caps, which, in measure, as new groups arrived, contracted into mists of red. Above this bobbing field of heads two thin shafts started upward, nearly lost in the descending dusk. Goursac, extending his hand in the direction of these, said:
"There is the guillotine."
"It does not seem very terrible," answered Barabant. "Let us stay here; it is, perhaps, a false report. In ten minutes it will be too dark."
Others with the same idea lingered on the outskirts of the crowd or turned away. The faces of the throng could no longer be distinguished, when suddenly afar there sprang up a circle of torches, and the scaffold emerged from the night.
The two friends hastily made their way through the crowd until, at the end of twenty minutes' patient endeavor, they reached the foremost ranks. A calm spread among the unseen throng, broken by sudden tensions at each new alarm. The people, who had greeted the first appearance of the guillotine with cries of disappointment and demands for the more spectacular gallows, were now impressed by the cloak of mystery the night drew about the scaffold. The machine was no longer mere wood and iron; it had tasted blood: it was human.
Barabant, from his position of vantage, could distinguish the upright shafts, where from time to time, as Goursac explained the mechanism, some reflection from a torch falling on the knife above, there appeared the dull display of steel like the sudden threat of a brutish fang.
Turning from the scaffold, Barabant examined the crowd, where, seeking for Nicole, he perceived Louison worming her way toward them.
Suddenly a whisper ran over the heads and rose to a breeze of exclamations. The masses tightened. Those in front were swept against the guards as those behind surged forward, stretching to tiptoe. Louison, caught in the press, was imprisoned not twenty feet away. This time the alarm was not vain. From all sides burst the growl of the mob.
"Hu! hu! hu!"
A long, tedious moment succeeded, then suddenly the scaffold swarmed with dark figures. The hooting and the screeching gave place to a burst of hand-clapping. Barabant, astonished at the implacable ferocity of the crowd, turned to examine it, but his eye encountering Louison, remained there.
The radiance of a neighboring torch redeemed her figure from the obscurity. Her head was strained slightly forward, while one hand clutched the kerchief at her throat as though to restrain her eagerness. The lips were parted, the eyes glowed with the intensity of fascinated contemplation, but her whole figure, in contrast to the unbridled passions of the crowd, remained, as during the attack on the Tuileries, controlled and insensible.
So unnatural was her attitude that Barabant could not have averted his eyes had not the hand of Goursac recalled him to the drama before him. He sought in the gloom and the shadows, seeing nothing, until suddenly out of the darkness came the shoot and the thud of the knife.
A woman, with a cry, caught his arm, burying her head in his sleeve. Another woman, holding a baby, was shouting wildly:
"Bravo! Bravo!"
A tottering veteran, in the costume of the Invalides, questioned him eagerly:
"Is it over? Tell me, citoyen, is it over?"
The woman on his arm continued to gasp hysterically. Himself recoiling at this death out of the darkness, he returned to the contemplation of Louison.
Her pose had relaxed, while a slight smile of disdain appeared as she watched the frantic crowd acclaim the head which a bourreau held to them. On her face was neither horror nor anger, neither disgust nor passion. As calmly as though before her own mirror, she smoothed out her dress and replaced the cockade, torn by the contact of the crowd, with a fresh one from her basket, scenting first its perfume. She raised her eyes, and her glance met that of Barabant, overcome with disgust. She frowned, and turning her shoulder, was lost in the crowd which now flowed out in widening circles.
"What is there about her!" Barabant exclaimed, turning to Goursac.
"About whom?"
"Louison," he said impatiently. "You did not see her? She made me shiver!"
"She affects me like a snake," Goursac answered. "She is a creature of the night, in her element at such a time. They say she never misses an execution. Well, citoyen, what of the machine?"
"Horrible!"
"You are wrong," Goursac protested. "It does not take life: it suppresses it, and that by a process more charitable than natural death. That is the way a nation should avenge itself." He repeated several times in a transport of enthusiasm, "Magnificent!"
"There, look at it now!"
At Barabant's summons they paused at the gate, looking back at the dim circle of lights around the guillotine unseen but divined, while Barabant continued:
"The first time did not count—it was only a thief. To-night is the true beginning of the guillotine—a sinister and ominous beginning."
"Still, what a spectacle!" Goursac exclaimed. "What could be more dramatic?"
"Too much so," Barabant retorted. "I admit I am impressionable, but to-night the blow seemed to fall from above our own heads."
"You are superstitious. You will be telling me next that you had a premonition about your own neck."
"Hardly; but, my friend, yours is so long and the chances of politics are so many—"
"Don't trouble yourself," replied Goursac, laughing, and with a mock gesture he extended his fist. "As for my neck, Madame Guillotine, I defy you to take it." He turned to Barabant. "You, my friend, are so gallant that I won't answer for yours."
They passed into the Rue Royale, Goursac slightly in advance. Barabant, rubbing shoulders with the departing crowd, felt a pull on his arm and heard the voice of Nicole saying mischievously:
"Barabant, are you very angry with me?"
Too astonished to make answer, he remained dumbly gazing into the teasing countenance; but at that moment Goursac, perceiving them, called out indulgently:
"That's right, children; we don't live long enough for lovers to quarrel. I'll keep discreetly ahead."
Barabant persisting in his silence, Nicole continued pleadingly:
"Then you are still angry?"
"Yes."
"I am sorry."
She said it in such a gentle tone, sighing slightly, that Barabant's anger held no longer; still, as a measure of policy, he kept silent.
Goursac, preparing to wheel into a side street, called back, with a laugh of which only Nicole could guess the cost:
"Good-by, my children; I leave you in peace. Love-making is disconcerting to the older generation. Reconcile yourselves quickly."
Barabant and Nicole, thus left to themselves, continued arm in arm silently homeward, avoiding the thronged thoroughfares, the noise and the lights, plunging by preference down quiet ways where only an occasional window reddened the sides of the night. Barabant struggled to maintain his just anger; Nicole, who had yielded to an impulse in accosting him, searched for some means to regain the ground which she felt she had surrendered.
"You don't answer," she said at last, withdrawing her arm half-way. "You want me to go?"
He freed himself brusquely and faced her with the angry cry:
"Coquette!"
"No, that I am not!" she cried, and seizing his arm, she said rapidly: "Barabant, it is not true. You have no right to say that!"
"You have a right to be what you wish."
Nicole, checking herself, said sadly:
"You still believe I am playing with you?"
"I do."
She withdrew a step and shook her head.
"No, it is not you I am playing with."
Barabant, who did not fathom the allusion, started to ask her what she meant; but Nicole, immediately perceiving the danger, retreated from her serious mood, and slipping her arm through his, said imperiously as they started on:
"Barabant, have you ever been in love—seriously in love?"
"Oh!"
"But seriously?"
"No."
"I was sure of it."
"And why?" Barabant demanded, nettled at her assumption.
"Because you understand nothing of a woman." She continued rapidly: "Listen to reason, my friend. You assume rights over me and my actions, and yet what right have you? You have never once told me that you love me. Yet you are angry because I insist upon being wooed, foolish, ignorant fellow!"
Her reproof, which she designed to be heavy, weakened despite herself, until at the end she pronounced it almost caressingly.
"Is that just, Nicole?" Barabant cried, seizing the opening. "Why am I angry? Because you will not give me the opportunity." He drew her closer to him. "Nicole, listen to me but once."
"No, no," she checked him imperiously, "I do not wish to. You are too headlong. Barabant, I tell you, you do not know yourself."
"I—I don't know what I feel?"
She checked him again.
"If you do, then respect my wishes." She added almost pleadingly: "Not too fast, Barabant. Be reasonable and I will not avoid you again." Then peremptorily changing the subject: "Did you see Louison? She is always at an execution."
He accepted the turn reluctantly.
"I saw her."
"How did she affect you?"
"Like a snake," he answered, using Goursac's expression. "There is something about her that repels me."
"I was afraid she might attract you," she confessed, with a laugh, in which showed a little relief.
At No. 38 they groped into the entrance, feeling the walls with their hands. The crow set up a raucous crying, while la Mère Corniche appeared at the door, shading her candle to discover their approach. They passed on through the first court to the bottom of the staircase, where a single torch flickered in its bracket. Nicole held out her hand, averting her face.
"Good night, Barabant, and until to-morrow."
The hour, the place, the torch that allowed her body to melt into the shadow and illuminated only the eyes, the lips, and the smile that tempted him with the mystery of what it hid, overcame his resolutions. He caught her by the wrists and drew her toward him. Nicole gave a little cry, resisting feebly.
"I cannot understand you," he cried fiercely. "What are you? What do you feel? Do you love me or do you not?"
She answered faintly, struggling against his arms:
"Let me go."
"Nicole, dear Nicole, I love you, I adore you."
"No, no, no!"
He released her, and throwing himself at her feet, he stretched up his hands to her, crying:
"Look, look!"
Nicole, with her hand to her cheek half turned from him, could not but believe. In his eyes she saw the tears appear, and moved, despite herself, by his emotion, she took his forehead between her palms, saying softly:
"Calm thyself, Barabant."
"You love me; you do, you do!" he cried. He caught her hand in his and repeated, as only the lover knows how: "I love you! I love you! I love you!"