"Who calls me by that name?" Sans-Chagrin cried, his face assuming a look of amazement. "Tiens! but I know that woman!"
Suddenly he struck his head.
"Of course!" he cried. "Pardi! what is there so terrible about me? I was always a good friend to you, La Glorieuse."
"You knew it, then, all the while?" the woman cried, turning fiercely to Dossonville.
"I know nothing," Dossonville answered; and seeing that chance had come in somehow to his aid, he demanded curtly of Sans-Chagrin: "What do you know of her?"
"A good deal," Sans-Chagrin began, with a smile. "I confessed her when I was a ci-devant curé in the days of fanaticism and error."
La Mère Baudrier, very white, extended her hand for permission to Dossonville, who said encouragingly:
"Allons, you are going to be reasonable now?"
"I will speak." She turned to Sans-Chagrin. "Citoyen Sans-Souci—"
"I am Sans-Chagrin now."
"Citoyen Sans-Chagrin, they accuse me of having a daughter by an aristocrat—Louison, the bouquetière."
"But your little one was called Rose."
"I changed the name afterward." For a moment she was thrown into confusion, but rallying, she continued: "You can say if the father was an aristocrat."
"I should hope so: it was I that baptized her. Come, now, what was he called? La Gloire—la, le—no, Lajoie, Simon Lajoie, that's it."
"Simon Lajoie!"
The thunderclap was Dossonville's, who, thrown off his guard, caught Sans-Chagrin by the shoulder, repeating:
"Simon Lajoie!"
But immediately, by a violent effort, he controlled himself, and dismissing them hurriedly, turned his back on the frightened woman, seeking to regain his composure. When he turned, it was with the calm of intense excitement.
"Is that the Simon Lajoie who used to frequent the Café Procopé?"
The woman remained dumb.
"Is it?"
"Yes."
"Good. Your explanations are sufficient. You are released."
He watched the look of immense relief that spread over her countenance as she rose, with a mumbled thanks, and started for the door.
"By the way, citoyenne," he cried carelessly; "one moment. Come back. Sit down. Could the Citoyen Lajoie have been any one in disguise?"
Terrified and trapped, the woman sprang up.
"For instance, the good Citoyen Charles Sanson?"
Her answer was a shriek and the thud of her body falling in a swoon to the floor.
"Certainly, he is demented," Le Corbeau cried when, after a dozen zigzags, Dossonville continued to plunge furiously ahead up street after street.
"Decidedly so," grumbled Sans-Chagrin. "Here's three times we've passed the Tour St. Jacques."
"What the devil could have happened?"
"You know Lajoie?"
"Why, of course—a little insignificant man."
"It was perhaps his brother."
"He hadn't the look."
"Anyhow, I say it's time to rest."
"My legs are worn out."
"If we suggested a halt?"
"I don't dare."
"Neither do I."
Oblivious to their fatigue, Dossonville wandered on in absurd circles, heedless of his surroundings, while if he passed a corner three times he did not notice it once. Vain and proud in his imperturbability, for the first time he was completely unnerved by this vision of the executioner that rose up at the side of the girl whom he had been on the verge of loving. All at once the mystery of her character was revealed, the insensibility to suffering, the unnatural curiosity, and the sang-froid beyond a woman.
"What an inheritance! What a curse!" he repeated.
Under the broken silhouettes of the housetops across the luminous sky, from out the mysterious, vague corners of the night, there started up, more ghostly and more sinister, the shadowy dynasty of the Sansons, the pariahs accursed, isolated, loathed, flinging themselves in vain against the barriers of prejudice, striving to escape into the obscurity of their fellows, always discovered, always driven back on the fingers of the crowd, that shrank away even as it pursued.
Back of the furtive figure of Sanson appeared the troop of malign ancestors, masked in scarlet or in black, nonchalant in their blood service, while behind hovered the red cloud of victims,—men, women, priests, nuns, children and gray-heads,—in long danse macabre around the ax, the gallows, and the guillotine; and among the Sansons, he saw, calm and uncomprehending, the figure of Louison.
Suddenly above his head rose the twin shafts of the guillotine, dominating the desert of the night. Then trembling, aghast at this sinister menace, Dossonville, with a cry of horror, turned and fled from the inanimate thing that waited there relentlessly the coming of the day.
In the first recoil from his personal association, he had promised himself never again to encounter Louison; but with the morning she seemed so expelled from his past that, yielding to an overpowering desire to study her in the light of his new knowledge, he drifted, almost unconsciously, to the Place de la Revolution.
The crowd in which he sheltered himself was loose, not very attentive, nor very large: the spectacle was old; there was not enough variety in the performers. In front, scores of women, seated indolently on their chairs, suspended their knitting at each fall of the ax, counting:
"Twenty."
"Twenty-one."
At each execution a murmur wandered through the crowd—a conventional, listless, slurred cry:
"Vive la Nation!"
Louison, never still, moved among the tricoteuses, nodding and chatting. As each hum announced the arrival of a victim on the scaffold she turned for a momentary, prying glance; then, without interest, wheeling about, she cried her cockades, seeking in the crowd a likely customer.
Absorbed in the girl, marveling at the strange and terrible forces that drew her back to the parent scaffold, Dossonville fell into so deep an abstraction that it cost him his concealment. Before he could retire with the departing crowd, Louison, perceiving him, had hastened to his side.
"What happened last night?" she said, with an imperious gesture. "What did you say to my mother?"
"How do you know I saw her?" he said, unable to control a slight movement of recoil.
"I know it. What happened?" she demanded impatiently. "I was there this morning, but she was gone—gone during the night. What passed between you?"
"You have been misinformed."
"Dossonville, you are deceiving me," she said, looking in his face. "You saw her, and you learned the name of my father."
Without allowing time for denial, she took his arm and led him toward the Cours la Reine, turning among the bypaths of the luxuriant woods. There, amid the joyous gaiety of the spring, under the soft foliage of the chestnuts, she faced him with a peremptory question:
"You saw her?"
"No."
"She told you?"
"No."
Louison examined his face attentively.
"What is the matter with you to-day, and why do you conceal it from me? Did you not promise to tell me?"
"Yes."
"Then?"
"Nothing has happened."
"Dossonville, you are lying lamely," she said; then she added, with a frown: "My father was a great scoundrel, then?"
Dossonville did not reply.
"How stupid you are! You think it would make a difference. How does it affect me? Come, I am not responsible, no matter who it is. Tell me. It cannot affect me."
"It will."
"Then you know," she said instantly.
Dossonville shrugged his shoulders. He desired the appearance of resistance more than to resist, for his curiosity was stronger than his pity. But having thus betrayed himself, he added impressively:
"Do not force me to tell you."
She began to laugh.
"Louison, I warn you, do not demand to know."
"I do demand it. I insist."
"You will curse me."
"No."
"I cannot tell you."
"Who is it?" she cried, with a laugh. "Philippe Egalité, a farmer-general, Bailly, Capet even,—I mention the worst."
"Louison," he said shortly, "they call you the daughter of the guillotine."
She stopped, perplexed.
"You are well named."
"Don't return to that," she said irritably. "It was agreed we were not to mention that. Come, don't keep me waiting. I tell you it will make no difference."
"You absolve me?"
"Of course."
"Even if Sanson were your father?"
Louison burst out laughing, but suddenly she broke off at the sight of his face.
"Is that serious?"
"Yes."
She repeated, "Is that serious?"
"Yes."
"I am the daughter of Sanson?"
Dossonville inclined his head, awaiting the explosion. To his surprise, she remained quiet, withdrawing a little, while her eyes still waited on him, as though expecting a denial.
"How curious!" she said at length. "I never thought of that. Ah, I understand why she hid it. Now tell me all."
Seeing that she did not realize the extent of the revelation, Dossonville quickly related the facts, astonished at her calm, wondering what force was working beneath the surface.
Louison, in fact, unable immediately to comprehend the situation, continued to watch Dossonville, as though to estimate from his behavior the force of the change to her. Remembering his attempted escape on the Place de la Revolution, and alarmed at a new reserve in his manner, she asked herself angrily, albeit anxiously, what difference the knowledge would make in him. To test him, she advanced a step and said, holding out her arms as though to embrace him:
"Thanks, my friend; you have kept your promise."
He withdrew but a step and only for an instant, but that involuntary shrinking was her sentence.
With a cry of despair, she bounded back, transformed with hot, revolting anger, her fingers struggling against the temptation of the dagger, crying to him:
"Go! Go quickly! Go now!"
Then, distrusting the murder in her heart, she fled into the woods; but in a moment, crazed with the cruel injustice of her fate, she came running back, her lips trembling with passion, her breath cut and quick. With his accustomed prudence, Dossonville had retired by another direction, leaving Louison to tire herself out among the fragrant paths in fruitless, maddened rushings.
Gradually among the tricoteuses, the bouquetières, and the clientèle of the Cabaret de la Guillotine it began to be whispered that something extraordinary had happened to Louison. Her manner had changed. She was no longer indifferent, mocking, and careless under the scaffold. Instead, her companions began to be alarmed at the cloud on her brow, the brooding fixity of her glance, the abruptness and the poverty of her speech. Her questions were even stranger than her moods. One day she asked of her companion, thrusting her hand toward the guillotine:
"Does that affect you to see them die like that?"
"I dream sometimes at nights," the girl answered.
Then Louison, turning on her an uncomprehending glance, exclaimed:
"True?"
Another time she said:
"Doesn't that make you curious?"
"Of what?"
"Curious to know what you would do."
Those who repeated her remarks exclaimed in apprehension and tapped their foreheads. As a natural consequence, the most extraordinary rumors arose. One declared that she had been seen thrice at midnight prowling about the vicinity of the scaffold. Another affirmed that he on whom she looked with anger would perish. Others, scorning these absurd rumors, gave it as their opinion that her mind was shaken by her unnatural obsession. The girl did not fail to notice the change in the demeanor of her companions, and, in her tortured imagination, ascribed to it a different cause.
"Why do they draw away from me?" she said once.
"It's your imagination."
"Are you superstitious?" she said disjointedly.
"I? A little."
"Why do they call me the daughter of the guillotine? Doesn't that strike you as odd?"
And she threw upon her companion a quick, cunning glance, as though to surprise the momentary confusion that would expose her real knowledge.
Thermidor began with the hecatombs from the pretended Conspiracy of the Prisons, and the transfer of the guillotine to the Barrière du Trône Renversé. The great rolling biers, attended by the scum of the city, bore each day to the scaffold their thirty, forty, sixty victims. Even the Faubourg St. Antoine, satiated and appalled, began to grumble, while from time to time voices broke out in protestation, willing from mere lassitude to end the spectacle by their own sacrifice.
On the 6th of Thermidor, almost at the side of Louison, a bouquetière, her comrade, cried out:
"I am sick of it! Robespierre is a scoundrel. They kill too many people. I want to die."
The next day she was on the scaffold, looking down indifferently, contented to end the fatigue of surfeited disgust.
Louison laughed aloud.
"Why do you laugh?" her neighbor said. "What has she done to you?"
"I do not laugh at her," she answered impatiently. "I laughed because I told her I would go first."
Her companion edged away. The tricoteuses, stopping their needles, counted:
"Forty-eight!"
At that moment Louison beheld Dossonville on the outskirts of the crowd. Seizing the girl nearest to her, a child of fifteen, by the shoulder, she cried, with a furious gesture:
"Jeanneton, do you see that fellow over there? He thinks I can't see him, the fool! As though I cared!"
The child struggled to free herself, but Louison, without relaxing her hold, transferred her look to the scaffold. Twice again the murmur rose:
"Forty-nine!"
"Fifty!"
"Do you know what I am wondering?" Louison said suddenly to the child whimpering in her clutch. "How strange it must feel to be there."
All at once, releasing the frightened Jeanneton, she advanced toward the guillotine, as though irresistibly sucked into the maelstrom, stopped, drew her hand across her forehead, then, facing the crowd, flung away her basket of flowers and shouted:
"Vive le Roi!"
In an instant she was surrounded, while everywhere the cries went up:
"She is mad!"
"She is drunk!"
"We have seen it for weeks."
"She is not responsible."
"She is a patriot."
Others insisted:
"Arrest her!"
"The Nation is insulted!"
"No favor!"
About the fringes of the crowd they questioned excitedly, running to and fro:
"Who is it?"
"Louison."
"Impossible!"
"Yes, Louison."
"She is mad!"
About her the mass struggled and swayed, some crying to her to simulate drunkenness, others clamoring for her arrest. In the center, Louison, alone calm and indifferent, secure in the knowledge of what must follow, continued to regard the silhouette of the guillotine, while about her lips was that curious smile which is seen only on the face of the martyr or the insane.
As Nicole, in the hall of the Porte-Libre, stopped aghast at this apparition of their enemy, Cramoisin perceived her, and scuttling hurriedly forward, cried in triumph:
"Bonjour, Nicole. What luck, eh? Well, aren't you going to say good day?"
"Bonjour," she answered hastily.
"And Barabant, too," he cried. "Better still, and so glad to see me! Bonjour, Barabant."
"Ah, it's you, hypocrite!" Barabant answered scornfully.
There was a movement of incredulity and alarm among the prisoners, who hastened to withdraw from them. Cramoisin, as though whipped across the face, fell back, scowling and cursing, while Nicole, seizing Barabant's arm, cried:
"Barabant, what have you done?"
"Nicole," he answered, "do you remember what Goursac said when they arrested him?"
"No."
"'They are liberating me.' Well, I too wish to be free. I have lived like a dog for months. That is ended. I will not cringe before this bully, who will send us to-morrow to the guillotine."
"Then you are determined to die?"
"Yes."
"So be it."
They took their places at the long table, huddling among the famished and the fever-racked, while the scullions brought in pails the revolting food. Anxious to learn the position of Cramoisin, Nicole was about to question her neighbor, an abbé whose kindly look encouraged her, when Cramoisin, suddenly appearing at her shoulder, exclaimed:
"Eh, Nicole, my dear, if you want to know what I am doing here, ask me. I'll tell you. I am the secretary of the Conspiration. I keep a list of all the good conspirators and I see that they are rewarded. I bring good luck. I've been here but a week and we've guillotined forty!"
"You know him?" the priest asked as the bully swaggered down the line, and Nicole perceived the slight movement with which he drew away.
"He is our bitterest enemy."
"Pardon," he murmured, regarding her with compassion.
"We expect death," she answered quietly.
"What he says is true," he added in a whisper. "Since he has been here they have taken forty of us. He makes out the lists every night. We live at his pleasure."
"Does he live among us?" she asked, with a quickened interest.
Again Cramoisin returned, strutting with bombastic gestures, crying to the room:
"I am the friend of Fouquier. Fouquier promised me to-day that in two more weeks we could put out a sign, 'To let.' Isn't he kind to us, though? He's very sympathetic, is Fouquier. And I am his friend—I, Eugène Franz Cramoisin. He honors me with his confidence. Eat in peace. I'll speak to him about you. Don't worry."
He swaggered on, vaunting his intimacy, loudly assuring them he brought good luck.
Nicole anxiously repeated her question.
"He keeps up the farce of being a prisoner," her neighbor answered.
"Where does he lodge?"
"Near you, where the new arrivals are put."
"Sangdieu!" rose again the voice of Cramoisin, who, farther down, had halted at the side of a woman. "The herring is rotten. Do you not see it? Come, you must complain."
"It is all I need," came the faint answer. "I am not hungry."
"Bah, you aristocrats, you haven't the courage of dogs!" He returned to another: "And you, young man, they treat you badly, eh? Shall I complain to Fouquier?"
The youth, who had imprudently met his eye, instantly dropped his head; but Cramoisin, amid the jeers of the turnkeys, with a pretense of listening for his answer, exclaimed:
"What's that you say? Robespierre is a scoundrel?"
"I said nothing!"
"Then you thought it, and thoughts are offenses!"
Arrived opposite Barabant, he planted himself with folded arms and cried:
"Well, Citoyen Barabant, the food's good, eh?"
Pushing back his plate, Barabant likewise folded his arms and answered with a sneer:
"Do you think so?"
"To me it is delicious!"
"That's not astonishing,—it's the food of swine!"
A murmur rumbled over the hall, rising to weak cries of protests:
"No."
"He slanders it."
"We don't think so, citoyen."
Others implored Barabant to be silent, trembling at his rash speech, that would suffice to empty the prison. Under pretense of upbraiding him, they surrounded him, beseeching him to have a thought of their danger. Yielding to their terror, Barabant remained silent; but when, after the meal, they had dispersed to their rooms, he exclaimed:
"Ah, that did me good! I feel I am a man again. Nicole, to-night I shall sleep soundly for the first time in months, knowing that after to-morrow I may sleep more soundly."
Waiting barely long enough to assure herself of his unconsciousness, Nicole withdrew from his side and stole down the corridor, seeking until she found under a door a slit of light.
At her soft entrance Cramoisin started up in alarm from the desk where he had been preparing his list, and placed the chair between them.
"I am not come to harm you," she said disdainfully. Still for a moment he eyed her in doubt, before he was reassured. He grumbled:
"What do you want?"
From where she was she could see the list, and at its head the one name she dreaded to find.
"Read, if you wish," he said indifferently. "It will give you pleasure."
There were ten names in all, Barabant's being the first, and hers was not of the number.
"I have something to ask of you."
"Ask."
"I do not ask that we be sent to the guillotine together," she said, planning cunningly to avoid one danger. "That would be too great a consolation for you to accord us. Exchange my name for Barabant's."
"Nini," he said, watching her with covetous, blinking eyes. "I don't intend to let you go."
"If you will send me instead," she cried; "if you swear it, swear to spare him, I will give you a secret that will earn you the gratitude of Fouquier."
"You are too pretty," he said, with a smirk; "when one is as pretty as that, one is a patriot."
"You will not accept?"
"What, after this evening?"
"Citoyen," she cried, "he is in a delirium! It was the fever."
"Yes, indeed."
"Citoyen, he admitted to me that it was unjust."
"He shall go. You I'll keep."
"Citoyen Cramoisin," Nicole said coldly, "you can never make me belong to you, if that is your purpose. You are not Javogues, and I killed Javogues. Do you understand?"
Before the fire in her eyes Cramoisin shrank away, mumbling:
"You are more difficult than the women of the aristocrats."
"I give you my secret!" Nicole cried in despair. "Use it for your own good. I did not kill Javogues because he pursued me; I killed him to destroy a tyrant. Place my name there instead of Barabant's, and I will affirm it before the Tribunal. You will have the credit of discovering a plot. Fouquier will reward you."
"Is that your secret?" Cramoisin said contemptuously. "Nothing new in that."
"What! You knew," she cried, "and held back my name?"
"Bah! When one is dead, one is no longer a patriot."
"Citoyen Cramoisin, listen. If you will put my name on the list instead of Barabant's, I'll give you all the money I have."
To her joy, he looked up with a sudden interest.
"How much have you?"
"Twenty livres."
At the mention of this amount, which Nicole had managed to preserve, his eye became eloquent; but suddenly controlling himself, he asked:
"Paper?"
"Gold."
"You have it with you?"
"Yes."
"Let's see it."
"When you agree."
"It is right to be merciful," he said at last, with a sigh. "But I cannot spare him more than one day."
"For a week?" she pleaded.
He shook his head.
"Six days—five?"
"Impossible!"
"Cramoisin, for pity's sake, four?"
"Never, never!"
"Cramoisin, by your hope of salvation!"
"I'll give you three; not another hour."
He stretched out his hand.
"No; erase first."
He took off the name of Barabant and substituted, "The woman Nicole."
"What did you write?"
"The woman Nicole."
"Put the Citoyenne Nicole Barabant."
"What! You are his wife?"
"Put it down."
"There! Give me the money."
"And you will keep Barabant's name until the 10th of Thermidor?" she said solemnly.
"Yes."
"Swear it."
"I swear it."
"On your honor."
"There, on my honor, then! Give me the money."
She gave it to him, and suddenly casting herself on her knees, she cried hysterically:
"Thanks, thanks! You have a heart, I know. You will keep your word. You can pity. You can be merciful. Thanks! Thanks!"
Catching the ugly, cruel hands in hers, she covered them with her kisses and her tears. Then, escaping, she fled down the corridor, returning to bed, but not to sleep.
In the morning Barabant awoke, to find her eyes open and the sunlight in the room.
"How well I slept!" he said, springing up. Going to the window, he spread his hands into the beam of the sun that entered. "That feels good. Tiens, you have a strange look! What is it? You are not afraid?"
"No," she answered, smiling.
"Well, what then?"
"I have something—"
"Why, you're all wrought up," he said, in surprise, as she stopped.
"Barabant, I ask you only because there is no hope of life. Barabant, I—"
"Why, mignonne, what is it? What has happened?"
She threw herself in his arms, sobbing:
"Barabant, I want to be a wife!"
The moments that he held her in stupefaction were moments of agony to her. He put her from him, looking in amazement at the tear-stained face.
"Idiot that I am!" he cried suddenly. "That is what has been tormenting you!"
Waiting only for the accent of his voice, she sprang back, trembling, not daring to look at him.
"Then you will?" she cried, stretching out her hands to him. "Then you will?"
"Of course!"
Into his arms she threw herself, sobbing with the poignant ecstasy of joy, while he listened, still uncomprehending.
"That means so much to you?" he said. "But I always considered you as my wife."
Even in her emotion his simplicity drew from her a smile.
"Since when have you had this idea?"
"From the beginning."
"True?"
"Yes."
"From—"
"From the afternoon of the 10th of August; but I did not realize it then."
The correction summed up all her history.
All at once Barabant, rousing himself from his amazement, said:
"But how are we to be married?"
"Do you remember the abbé next to us?"
"Yes."
"I will ask him."
"Do you think he will do it?" he said doubtfully.
"I know how to convince him."
He kissed her and drew her away from him.
"Shall I go?" she said. "Now?"
"Fly!"
She was away a long time. When she reappeared with the priest she said timidly:
"I have taken very long. I wanted to confess. It did me good. Does that annoy you?"
"No," he said smilingly; and looking at the face of her companion, he said to himself: "She has made him cry."
They joined hands, kneeling before the black-robed figure in the warm room, pervaded with the sunlight that the bars on the window could not arrest. He made them man and wife, and blessed them, and, bending, put out his hands to raise the woman. But almost immediately, with a smile that was of the compassionate master, he ceased his attempts and stole from the room.
"Tell me one thing," Barabant asked.
"What is it?"
"Why did you not ask before?"
"I could not ask. Now it makes no difference."
"But why?"
Again and again, through their solitary afternoon, as they waited, now silent, now questioning each other, he returned to his query without success. At five o'clock, perceiving in her body an involuntary shudder, he said:
"You're not afraid of to-morrow?"
"No. So many others have gone." She had a superstitious idea of God and another world, confused, simple, and sufficient. Thinking of Javogues, she added: "The abbé said I should be saved. Do you believe it?"
"Yes," he answered, respecting her faith. "I shall not fear, either."
"I know," she answered dreamily.
"She does not think of me," he thought. Then wishing to talk of himself, he said:
"It is life that I regret. I ought to have done so much."
"I wanted to give you that," she said at last, feeling in the air the approach of the last hour. "I wanted to die for you. That was my dream. You would have revered my memory and I should have been happy."
"Why do you say that?" he said, frowning. "And what do you mean?"
"I am only an ignorant girl," she said. "I could not long have been your companion."
"You are wrong," he cried vehemently, repeating it several times, "and you do me an injustice."
She yielded, and asked the question that had been on her lips a dozen times:
"Truly, Eugène, you would have married me?"
"Can you doubt it, Nicole?"
"You are good, very good." She smiled, satisfied to bear this promise away with her, but in her heart she was not quite convinced. "You have been very kind."
He was glad at such a moment to own a good action.
"Do you know, it's good to have you," he said slowly, a moment awed by the thought of the morrow. "I do not fear, but I am glad you are to be with me."
"Yes, I know."
All at once she sprang up, trembling from head to foot, crying:
"Do you hear?"
"The bell?"
"It is six."
"What! you are trembling?"
"Kiss me."
She threw herself into his arms, clutching him to her, while he, in bewilderment, said:
"But I don't understand."
"Hold me, Eugène, hold me!" she cried. "Don't let me go!"
She kissed him, holding his head in her hands, and the kiss awakened in him the memory of that first meeting of their lips, in the dark stairway, under the weak torch. He placed his arm about her waist, drawing her gently down the corridor, and believing that her courage at the last had failed her, he whispered as they went:
"Do not fear, little one. I am with you. I'll have courage for us both."
The prisoners assembled in the great hall, listless and dragging their steps, searching among themselves with anxious or mechanical curiosity, seeking to divine the chosen. Soon from the courtyard rumbled the wheels of the arriving cart.
Presently, faint at first, down the distant corridor fell the step of the turnkey, approaching slowly, as though to prolong the cruel suspense. With a crash the gates were flung open, and, flanked by two mastiffs, holding in his hand the fatal roll, the jailer suddenly confronted every eye. Without pause, the monotonous, singing voice opened the long, dreary preamble, finished it, and, rising to a shout, began the list:
"The Citoyenne Nicole Barabant!"
A sigh of relief escaped the girl, and her head fell on the shoulder of Barabant; but her ears, deaf to the cries of sorrow, to the lamentations of mothers and wives, to the screams of astonishment and despair that woke the silent hall, followed anxiously the roll, counting:
"Seven—eight—nine!"
At the tenth she relaxed, and her arms wound about the neck of Barabant in the last long embrace, violent with the pang of parting. Suddenly, with a cry of despair, she tore herself from him,—an eleventh name was being read:
"The Citoyen Eugène—"
Something extraordinary had happened; the jailer had stopped in indecision. Nicole, in the agony of her mind, saw but one face—the mocking face of Cramoisin—against an opposite pillar.
"The Citoyen Eugène Franz Cramoisin!"
The sneer dropped out; the face grew livid. On all sides astounded cries went up:
"Cramoisin?"
"Impossible!"
"Cramoisin arrested!"
Nicole, understanding nothing but that Barabant was saved, hearing only Barabant's voice demanding like a madman to be taken, fell into his arms, crying:
"No, no, it is not a mistake! It is I who have saved you. Barabant! Barabant! It is as I wanted it! Remember me, Barabant! Don't forget me! The abbé will tell you all. Barabant—Barabant!"
They tore her from his arms and swept her away, still stretching out the unavailing fingers, still calling:
"Barabant! Barabant!"
The weeping and the wailing died behind the clashing gates. A woman, catching her in her arms, supported her down the unending corridor, whispering:
"Lean on me. I have no one."
They entered the courtyard and climbed into the chariot, where a few prisoners sadly and indifferently watched their arrival. There presently two turnkeys, laughing boisterously, bore out and dumped beside them the body of Cramoisin, who had fainted.
On the 9th of Thermidor Dossonville, who had long foreseen the inevitable conflict of Robespierre and the Convention, resolved on another rapid shift, and, appearing in the Rue Maugout, denounced Robespierre and the Jacobins in such unmeasured terms that he not only sent his listeners galloping off to denounce him, but to his amazement on turning about, found himself deserted even by Sans-Chagrin and Le Corbeau.
According to his custom, he visited the Conciergerie to inspect the prisoners. Already in the streets was the awakening of the great conflict. In the crowds the Jacobins alone raised their voices in furious boasting; but silence predominated, and the silence told of anger and condemnation.
In the first division he found no familiar face among the twenty-odd prisoners until, on the point of turning away, he discovered the abject form of Cramoisin. The downfall of the Terrorists appeared to him as a favorable presage.
He passed to the second division; there the crowd was thicker and more turbulent. Over the uneven field of bobbing heads he saw the judges on the bench, the listless jury, joking among themselves, and the abhorrent figure of Fouquier; while to the right, packed together on the benches, were the score of prisoners who waited, without hope, the mockery of a trial.
Dossonville, taking his place in the stream of those who constantly pressed to the front seeking the face of relative or friend, yielded good-humoredly the right of way to those who sought in sorrow. After some delay he reached the front rank. There a cry was torn from him:
"Oh, mon Dieu!"
At the first glance he had seen Nicole. Drawn by some subtle intelligence, she raised her eyes and saw him.
"What a fatality!" he cried to himself. "She herself has done this!"
A sudden anger filled him, of revolt and resentment against the stubborn sacrifice of this frail girl who had defeated him at the very last. His glance of reproach she met with one of content, which said: "You see, it is as I said."
She smiled seriously, a little sadly, as one who, though not regretting the decision, had not foreseen the cost.
A hand swept him back as others pressed fervently forward. He heard a mother's voice cry at his side:
"They have taken my child, my son."
His glance following dumbly the outstretched hands, he beheld at the side of Nicole the figure of a boy, who searched the crowd with frightened face. The buzz of voices rose about, the mother's mingling with the crowd.
"But it's a mistake. He's sixteen."
"Then don't worry, they can't touch him!"
"Aye, he's safe!"
"They arrested him for his brother, who's twenty-six."
"Calm yourself, la petite mère, any one can see he's a boy."
"They'll release him?"
"Of course—he's under age."
"Aye, any one can see that."
Dossonville but half heard them. He was crushed by the cruel turn of fate that had claimed her at the last, when the morrow would mean life and security. His eyes, yet refusing to believe, had never left Nicole's face. She was pale; but the pallor was of serenity, and gave to her person a certain distinction that seemed to raise her above her class. From time to time a certain pensiveness, whether of melancholy or of regret, gathered in her eyes. She was looking with womanly revolt below her, where, on a litter, exposed to all eyes, lay the unconscious form of a woman. The audience, rebelling against such cruelty, began to murmur:
"Remove her!"
"Take her out!"
"Send her to the hospital!"
The cry was taken up, passing from a murmur in the front ranks to volume and distinctness as it rolled back. The protest became so insistent that several of the jury began to cast anxious glances at the audience, and a judge motioned to Fouquier. There was an expectant lull; but Fouquier cried, with a sneer:
"She'll revive. Call the roll!"
The storm that had subsided in anticipation burst forth anew.
"No! No!"
"Remove her!"
"Justice!"
"Outrage!"
Near Dossonville a blacksmith, with leather apron, was shouting:
"To the hospital!"
A red-haired man in a baker's cap, with clenched fists, added:
"Tyrant!"
Fresh arrivals, bringing tidings of uprisings throughout the city, gave new courage to the protests. Fouquier, impressed at last by the outbursts, rose sullenly and commanded:
"Bear the woman to the witness-room, but the instant she revives bring her back."
The roll-call was begun—the simple attestation of individuality that had replaced the pleas of advocates and the taking of testimony. Encouraged by its first success, the audience began to murmur:
"They say the Quartier St. Antoine is in revolt against Robespierre."
"The Convention will surely declare him under arrest."
"If he falls, the executions will stop."
"I say the trial ought to stop until we see."
"Yes, postpone the trial."
"What! There are traitors, then, in the room!" cried Fouquier, who, the better to see, had mounted a step. Before his threatening glance the movement of clemency died away. Again was heard the monotonous voice of the clerk intoning the roll and the listless responses of the accused. In the stand one of the jury impatiently pulled out a watch, another stifled a yawn.
All at once there was a craning of heads. An interruption had come; the voice of the young boy was protesting:
"Citoyen, the accusation is for my brother. I am not twenty-six. I have done nothing against the Republic. Citoyen, I am sixteen. I have my papers to prove it."
A greffier nodded his head in confirmation, and extended a handful of papers toward the judge, saying:
"Citoyen, he speaks the truth."
Murmurs ran through the crowd:
"It's a mistake!"
"He's a child!"
"Release him!"
On the judges' bench the figure of Dumas arose.
"And if you are only sixteen," he cried brutally, "in the matter of crime you are fully eighty." Then, with a furious gesture, he added: "Pass on, and make haste!"
The murmur of revolt from the audience was overwhelmed in a sudden roar of astonishment. Dumas had been arrested! The counter-revolution had come! Those who had not seen the arrest cried:
"But what has happened?"
"Tell us! Tell us!"
Others answered:
"Dumas!"
"Arrested!"
"The counter-revolution has come!"
A voice cried:
"The quartiers are in arms!"
"True?"
"The tocsin is ringing!"
"They'll make an end of Robespierre?"
"Impossible!"
"It's true! Haven't they arrested Dumas?"
"Suspend the trial!"
"Mercy! Clemency!"
All eyes turned to Fouquier, who answered contemptuously and stubbornly:
"Justice must take its course!"
At Dossonville's side the blacksmith, with the sudden frenzy of prophecy, cried:
"Fouquier, beware! The guillotine is waiting for you!"
While with brawny shoulders he wriggled free of the willing crowd, Dossonville looked for the hundredth time at Nicole. She had not abandoned her calm; only a slight frown told of the havoc the sudden opening and closing of the gates of hope played in her soul.
Another judge replaced Dumas. The roll-call was hurried on. Twice Fouquier sent a physician to report the condition of the woman in the witness-room. A flutter of the eyelids would have meant death. She remained in a stupor, and was at last sent to the hospital. The roll-call ended. The jury, after the farce of declaring that they had heard sufficient evidence, retired to deliberate upon the guilt of the twenty-six. They returned shortly. It was late, and many suffered from the postponement of the luncheon-hour. One man acquitted—Aviot Turot, laborer.
A shudder passed through the body of Dossonville, and a groan escaped his lips. The fatal, inevitable word "Guilty" overwhelmed him. Nicole heard it with a smile—sad, yet satisfied.
Another stir, and a buzz of comments rose as the executioner entered and began to converse with Fouquier. Those in front, who could hear, called back:
"Sanson is remonstrating."
"Sanson wants the execution deferred."
"He says the city is rising."
A last time Fouquier refused to budge, and, crossing his arms, reiterated bluntly, to be heard by all:
"No, no! I say no! Justice must take its course."
The condemned, who had paused as they had risen trembling with hope, filed out, while the crowd in the court-room surged forth to meet the tumbrels.
Dossonville, using his privilege of agent de sûreté, entered the prison, seeking Nicole in the crowd of prisoners massed in the outer hall; threading through anxious groups, who whispered:
"You saw Dumas arrested?"
"They say there is a revolt against Robespierre."
"The people seemed to sympathize with us."
Others, scorning to hang their hopes on desperate chances, waited stoically or reverently the summons to the tumbrels. A young aristocrat was whistling defiantly: