that which its good will sought to effect?  He cannot be said to have
been refined, but he had in him tastes which are the germs of
refinement, and which, when I knew him, had no doubt produced results.
Probably he was in 1791 a coarser person, but he must always have been a
man who could be forced by circumstances to think.

It may have been that the sense of a great gulf between him and a world
he was by nature inclined to like caused one of those rare spells of
despair to which the gay and over-sanguine are liable.  Of course he had
seen and for brief seasons shared the profligacy of the Cité,—his
memoirs confess this with absolute frankness,—but these gross lapses had
been rare and brief.  Now he plunged headlong into the worst vileness of
the most dissolute quarter, where few lived who were not saturated with
crime.  I have no desire to dwell on this part of his life.  A month
passed away, and he was beginning to suffer in health.  This amazed him.
He had not hitherto known a pang save that of hunger.  He began to drink
_eau-de-vie_ to relieve his sense of impaired strength, and being off
his guard and under the influence of the temporary mood of rashness
which drink is apt to cause, he twice narrowly escaped arrest.

Under the vivid impression thus created he was wandering homeward late
at night to some low resort in the Cité, when in the Rue aux Fèves he
heard a cry in front of him.  The moon was bright, and he saw a man set
upon by two fellows.  The person assailed was staggering from the blow
of a club, and fell with the cry which the thief heard.  Both bandits
threw themselves upon him, and, as he unwisely struggled, François saw
the glitter of a knife.  Clearly this was no easy prey.  As the three
tumbled over in the mud of the street there was small chance for a
decisive use of the blade.  François, as I have said, had been always
free from crimes of violence, but this affair was none of his business,
and had his pocket been full he might have left the ruffians and their
prey unmolested. His purse, however, was down to the last sou, and here
was a chance.

He called, "Catch them, Toto!" and, leaping forward, seized one of the
men by the throat and threw him on his back.  The poodle took a good nip
of the other rascal’s leg, and when the man broke away and, stumbling,
ran, pursued him until recalled by François’s whistle.  Meanwhile the
assaulted man sat up, a bit dazed.  The other fellow—it was he of the
knife—was on his feet again, and at once turned furiously on the
rescuer.  François darted to one side, and, catching him by the neck,
throttled him savagely.  His great length of arm made it impossible for
the scamp, who was short and strong, to reach any vital organ. But he
stabbed François’s shoulder over and over. François’s grip on the throat
was weakening, when the victim, now on his feet, struck the man under
the ear, and thus knocked him clean out of François’s failing grip.  He
fell headlong, but was up and away in a moment, while a crowd began to
collect.

"Hi! it is François!" some one cried.

"Quick!" said the thief.  "Room there!  Let us get out of this."
Seizing the man he had saved, he hustled his way through the crowd and
hurried him toward the bridge.  In a few minutes they were standing
alone by the river, amid the tombs back of Notre Dame.  Then the man
spoke:

"By Heaven! thou hast saved my life.  Hallo! thou art bleeding.  Here!"
and he tied a handkerchief about his shoulder.  "We shall be in luck to
find a chaise.  Wait!" and he ran away.

François’s head was dizzy.  He sat on a tombstone, well sobered now, but
bleeding freely.  It was long before he heard a horse; and when in the
chaise, where Toto promptly followed him, he fell back, and knew little
more until they stopped in the Rue St. Honoré.  Here his new
acquaintance got out, and soon returned with a glass of _eau-de-vie_.
With this aid, and the arm of his host, François was able to reach a
large room in the second story.  He fell on a couch, and lay still while
the other man ran out to find a surgeon.

On his arrival, François was put to bed in an adjoining room, and for
two weeks of care and good diet had leave to meditate on the changeful
chances of this wretched world.  For a while he was too weak to indulge
his customary keenness of curiosity.  His host, M. Achille Gamel, paid
him brief visits, and was singularly unwilling to talk one day, and the
next sufficiently so for the patient to learn that he had been in the
army as a _maître d’armes_, and was now, in his own opinion, the best
fencing-master in France. Through the partitions could be heard the
click, click of the foils, and now and then the crack of pistols. After
a fortnight François’s wounds were fairly healed, and he began to get
back his rosy complexion and his unfailing curiosity.

One pleasant evening in June, Gamel appeared as usual.  It was one of
his days of abrupt speech.

"Art well?"

"Yes."

"Thou art soon mended."

"Yes."  His brevity begot a like form of answer, and François was now
somewhat on his guard.

"I pay my debts."

"That is true."

"Now thou art well, what wilt thou do?"

"I—I—I shall go away."

"Why didst thou help me?"

"My pocket and paunch were empty.  It seemed a chance."

"Thy two reasons are good.  Who art thou?"

"Who is every one in the Cité?  A thief."

"_Diable!_ but thou art honest—in speech at least."

"Yes, sometimes.  I was a conjurer too—for a while."

"Yes, yes, I remember now.  Thou art the fellow with a laugh.  I see not
yet why thou hast helped me. Thou mightest easier have helped the
rascals and shared their gains."

François began to be interested, and laughed a laugh which was the most
honest of his possessions.

"I dislike clumsiness in my profession," he said. "Why should the
brutality of war be brought into a peaceful occupation?"  He was half in
earnest, half in jest.

"That is a third reason, and a good one."  It was difficult to surprise
Gamel.  "Suppose we talk business," he added.

"Mine or thine?"

"Mine.  A moment, Citizen François—permit me. Pray stand up a moment."

François rose as the fencing-master produced a tape-measure.  "Permit
me," and with no more words he set one end of the tape on François’s
shoulder and carried the length of it to his finger-tips.

François stood still, wondering what it all meant.

"The deuce!" said Gamel, slowly rolling up the measuring-tape.

"Well, what is it?  What is wrong?"

"Wrong?  Nothing.  It is astonishing!"

"What?"

"This arm of thine."

"Why?"

"It is one and a half inches longer than mine."

"Well?"

"A gift!  To have the longest arm in Paris!  _Mon Dieu!_"

"What of that?"

"A fortune!  Phenomenal!  Superb!  And a chest—and muscles!  By
Hercules, they are as hard as horn!"

"Well?"

"_Diable_!  Thou art dull for a thief."

François had a high opinion of himself.  He said: "Perhaps.  What next?"

"I need help.  I will teach thee to fence and to shoot.  Canst thou be
honest?  I ask not if thou art."

"Can I?  I do not know.  I have never tried very long."  Then he paused.
To fence like a gentleman, to handle a sword, had its temptations.  "Try
me."

"Good!  Canst thou be a Jacobin to-day and a Royalist to-morrow?"

"Why not?"

"The messieurs and their kind fence here in the morning; after our
breakfast come the Jacobins about two.  I ask not thy politics."

"Why not?" said François, who was the frankest of men—"why not?  I am an
aristocrat.  I am at the top of my profession.  I like naturally the
folks who are on top."

"France is like a ball now, no top, no bottom, rolling. Let us be
serious."

"_Dieu!_ that is difficult.  I want to quit thieving. It doesn’t pay at
present.  I accept the citizen’s offer. Does it include my dog?"

"Yes, indeed!  Toto—a treasure!  He will delight our pupils."

"Good!  He must have a little sword and wear a white cockade till noon,
and then a tricolor."

"And will five francs a week suffice until thou art fit to teach?  And
thy board and lodging—that goes without saying.  After a while we will
talk again."

"’T is a fortune!" said François; and upon this agreement the pair fell
to chatting about the details of their future work.

"One moment," said François, as Gamel rose. "What are thy own politics?"

"I will tell thee when I can trust thee," said the fencing-master.  "Now
they vary with the clock."

"I see.  But I have told thee mine."

"Thou wert rash.  I am not."

François laughed merrily, "Good night."  He was happy to be at rest,
well fed, and with something to do which involved no risk.  Gamel went
away, and François fell to talking to the poodle.

"Toto!  Sit up, my sleepy friend!  Attention! What dost thou think of M.
Achille Gamel?"  The poodle had been taught when questioned to put his
head on one side, which gave him an air of intelligent consideration.
"Ah, thou dost think he is as long-legged as I!  Any fool of a cur can
see that.  What else?"

"He has great teeth—big—the better to eat thee, my dear!  Curly hair,
like thine, and as black; a nose—of course he has a nose, Toto.  Art
perplexed, little friend?  Oh, that is it!  I see.  Thou art right.  He
smiles; he never laughs.  ’T is that bothered thee. Thou dost like him?
Yes.  Thou art not sure?  Nor I.  We must laugh for two.  The bones are
good here.  That is past doubt.  We will stay, and we will keep our eyes
open.  And listen now, Toto.  We are honest.  Good!  Dost thou
understand?  No more purses, or out we go.  No stealing of cutlets.  Ah,
thou mayest lick thy chops in vain, bandit!"

A few days later Gamel began to fence with François, who liked it well.
He was strong, agile, and like his old friends the cats for quickness of
foot.  Gamel was charmed.

"We must make no mistakes.  The foil held lightly—so, so!  If you grasp
it too strongly you will not feel the other’s blade.  That is better.
’T is the fingers direct the point.  Thy hand a little higher—so, so!"

They fenced before the pupils came and in the intervals when none was on
hand.  François was tireless.

It was June now, and Robespierre was the public prosecutor, with Pétion
at his side.  Gamel read aloud the announcement with a coldly stern
face.  François heard it with indifference.

"_Tiens!_" he cried.  "What matters it?  _Dame!_" as he lunged at the
wall, "I do believe my arm is an inch longer."  He was thinking, as he
tried over and over a new guard, of what a queer education he had had.
Gamel walked away into his own room.  He was a man who often liked to be
alone.  Apt to be monosyllabic with his pupils, he could at times become
seriously talkative at night over a pipe and a glass. François began to
like him, and to suspect that he in turn was liked—a matter not
indifferent to this poor devil, who had himself an undeveloped talent
for affection.

"_Mon ami_, Toto!  Let us think.  I might have been a priest.  What an
escape!  Or a great chorister. That is another matter.  A thief, a
street-dog, a juggler, a _maître d’escrime_.  _Parbleu_!  What next?  We
are getting up in the world.  My palm, little rascal? Thou wouldst read
it.  Ah, bad dog, not I!  Let us to bed; come along.  It seems too good
to last."

                                 *XII*

_In which Toto is seen to change his politics twice a day—the mornings
and the afternoons quarrel—In which Jean Pierre André Amar, "le
farouche," appears._

The fencing-master took great pains with his promising _débutant_, and
now at last thought he could trust him to give lessons.  He gave him
much advice, full of good sense.  He must dress simply, not in any
marked fashion.  And here were the two cockades, and two for Toto, who
was fitted with a toy sword, and had been taught to howl horribly if
François said, "Citizen Capet," and to do the like if he cried,
"Aristocrat!"

François, gay and a little anxious, followed Gamel for the first time
during the lesson-hours into the _salle d’armes_.  Toto came after them
in full rig, with a cap and a huge white cockade.  A dozen gentlemen,
most of them young, were preparing to fence.

The poodle was greeted with "Bravo!" and strutted about on his hind legs
with evident enjoyment of the approval.

"Wait here," said Gamel to François.  "I will by and by give thee a
chance."  François had, of course, been constantly in the room when the
patrons were absent, and it was now familiar.  It had been part of the
old hotel of some extinct nobleman, and was of unusual height, and quite
forty feet square, with tall windows at each end; a cushioned bench ran
around the walls, and above it hung wire masks, foils, sabers, and a
curious collection of the arms of past ages and barbarous tribes.
Chiefly remarkable were the many fine blades, Spanish or Eastern.  At
the side of the hall, a doorway led into the shooting-gallery, a late
adjunct since the English use of the pistol had been brought into the
settlement of quarrels made savage by the angry politics of the day.  On
one of the walls of the fencing-room was a large sign on which was
painted: "Achille Gamel, _ci-devant_ Maître d’Armes, Régiment du Duc de
Rohan-Chabot.  Lessons in the small sword, saber, and pistol."  The word
"Duc" was chalked over, but was still easily to be made out.

Presently Gamel came to François in his shirt and breeches, foil in
hand.  "This way, François."  As they slowly crossed the room, Gamel
went on to say in a low tone of voice: "Don’t be too eager. Take it all
as a matter of course.  Don’t be nervous. One must have had a serious
affair or two before one gets over the foil fever.  Remember, you are
here to teach, not to triumph.  There are few here you cannot touch, but
that is not business."

"I understand," said François.

"I will give you for your lesson the best blade in Paris.  You can teach
him nothing.  He is my foster-brother, the Marquis de Ste. Luce."

"Ste. Luce!"

"Yes; he is here often."

As they approached, the great gentleman came to meet them, separating
himself from the laughing group of younger men.

"_Ma foi!_" he exclaimed.  "Is this your new blade, Gamel?"  He caught
François’s appealing eye, and showed no sign of having known the thief
until they were apart from the rest and had taken their foils. Then he
said quietly, "Does Gamel know?"

"Yes, monsieur.  I saved his life in a row in the Cité, and he gives me
this chance."

"Good!  I shall not betray you.  But beware! You must keep faith, and
behave yourself."

"Monsieur may trust me."

"And you can fence?"

"A little, monsieur."

"Well, then, on guard!"  The marquis was pleased to praise the new
teacher.  "He has a supple wrist, and what a reach of arm!"  At last he
went away to Gamel’s room, where they were absent a half-hour. These
private talks, François observed later, were frequent, especially with
certain of the middle-aged gentlemen who took here their morning
exercise.

After this first introduction to business, François sat still when the
marquis had left him.  By and by the gentleman came back, and saying a
word of encouragement to François, went away.

"Take M. de Lamerie, François," said Gamel; and turning to a gentleman
near by, added, "_À vous_, monsieur."  Others began to select foils and
to fence in couples, so that soon the hall rang with the click, click of
meeting steel.  François was clever enough to let his pupil get in a
touch now and then, and meanwhile kept him and those who looked on
delighted with his natural merriment.  He was soon a favorite.  The dog
was made to howl at a tricolored cockade, and proved a great success.
As to the fencing-lessons, Gamel was overjoyed, and as time ran on came
to trust and to like his thief, who began speedily to pick up the little
well-mannered ways and phrases he heard about him.  He liked well to be
liked and to be praised for his skill, which week by week became
greater, until none except M. Gamel and the marquis were able to meet
him on equal terms.  The master of arms was generous; the wages rose.
The clothes François now wore were better, and when Gamel asked him to
choose a rapier for wear in the street, which was not yet forbidden, the
poor thief felt that he was in the full sunlight of fortune.

The afternoons were less to his taste.  If a new pupil arrived, the
cook, an old woman, let him in, and Gamel saw him in an anteroom and
settled terms and hours.  The Jacobins came after two o’clock. Then the
room was unusually full.  The poodle howled at the name of Louis Capet.
Tricolored cockades were everywhere.  The talk was of war and the
frontier, the ways of speech were guarded, the manners not those of the
morning.  These citizens were awkward, but terribly in earnest.  The
pistol-gallery was much in favor; but at this deadly play François was
never an expert.  He did not like it, and was pleased when the Vicomte
de Beauséjour, a favored pupil, said: "’T is a coarse weapon, François.
Ah, well enough to enable bulldog English to settle their disputes over
a bone; but, _dame!_ quite unfit to be the arm of honor of gentlemen."
This uncertain property of honor seemed to François a too insecure kind
of investment.  It was enough to have to take care of one’s pocket; and
his being now well lined, François began to resent the possibility of
those sudden changes of ownership which under other conditions he had
looked upon as almost in the nature of things.

During this summer, and in the winter of ’91 and ’92, Gamel was at times
absent for days.  Whenever he returned he was for a week after in his
monosyllabic mood.  François, who was keenly alive to his present
advantages, and who saw how these absences interfered with their
business, began to exercise his easily excited inquisitiveness, and to
meditate on what was beneath Gamel’s frequent fits of abstraction.  His
own life had known disappointments, not always of his own making.  He
dreaded new ones.  The past of the Cité, Quatre Pattes, Despard, those
haunting eyes of the marquis’s widowed daughter, the choristers, the
asylum, the mad street life—all the company of his uncertain days—were
gone.  Now, of late, he began to have a feeling of uneasy belief that
things were once more about to change.  Nor was the outer life of the
capital such as to promise tranquillity.  A nation was about to become
insane.  It was at this time like a man thus threatened: to-day it was
sane, to-morrow it might be reeling over the uncertain line which
separates the sound from the unsound.  Had François been more interested
and more apprehensive, he was intelligent enough to have shared the
dismay with which many Frenchmen saw the growth of tumultuous misrule.
Indeed, the talk of the morning fencing-school should have taught him
alarm.  But he had formerly lived the life of the hour, even of the
minute, and as long as he was well fed, housed, and clothed, his normal
good humor comfortably digested anxiety.

I should wrongly state a character of uncommon interest if I were to
give the impression of a man who had merely the constant hilarity of a
happy child. He was apt to laugh where others smiled; but, as he
matured, cheerful contentment was his usual mood, and with it, to the
last, the probability of such easily born laughter as radiated mirth
upon all who heard it, like a companionable fire diffusing its generous
warmth.  He was at this time doing what he most fancied.  The company
suited him.  He liked the tranquil ways of these courteous gentlemen.
In a word, he was contented, and for a time lost all desire to seek
change or adventure.  His satisfaction in the life made him more quiet
and perhaps more thoughtful. He had every reason to be cheerful, and
cheerfulness is the temperate zone of the mind.

At times, on Sundays, in the summer of ’92, he wandered into the country
with Toto; but these holidays were rare.  Now and then the habits of
years brought again the longing for excitement; with the meal-hours he
recovered his common sense, being a big fellow of sharp appetite and a
camel-like capacity for substantial food.

The feud between the cockades broke out at this time in duels, which it
became the fashion to drive to the Bois to see.  Women of all classes
looked on and applauded, and few liked it if the affair failed to prove
grave.  François found it entertaining.  The duels were, in fact, many
in the years of grace ’91 and ’92.

The morning pupils wore their hair in curls, dressed in short clothes,
and defied the new-fashioned republican pantaloons, which were rising up
to the armpits and descending the legs.  They carried sword-canes, or
sticks like the club of Hercules; a few still wore the sword.  Brown and
gray wore the afternoon citizens, with long straight hair, short
waistcoats, and long and longer _culottes_ above large steel
shoe-buckles, all that were silver having been given to aid the funds of
a bankrupt government.  The morning, which knew very well who came in
the later hours, abused the afternoon, and this portion of the day
returned those compliments in kind.

Now and then the morning had a little affair with the afternoon, for the
Terror was not yet.  In cafés and theaters there were constant
outbreaks, and men on both sides eager enough to sustain opinion by the
sword or the pistol.  When one of what François called "our little
domestic difficulties" was on hand, there was excitement and interest
among Royalists and Jacobins, with much advice given, and huge disgust
when monsieur was pinked by Citizen Chose of the Cordeliers or of the
Jacobin Club.

If the reverse obtained, and some gentleman of ancient name condescended
to run Citizen Chose through the lungs, there was great rejoicing before
noon and black looks after it.  Here were a half-dozen affairs in a
month, for these were the first blades in France.

There were laws against the duel, but the law changed too fast for
obedience, and fashion, as usual, defied it. Hatred and contempt were
ready at every turn.  Two abbés fought, and what was left of the great
ladies went to see and applaud.

This duel between morning and afternoon began to amuse Paris.  But
pretty soon neither the master of arms nor his assistant was as well
pleased at the excessive attention thus drawn to the school of fencing.
Gamel disliked it for reasons which he did not set forth, and François
because he felt that his disturbing readiness to turn back to a life of
peril and discomfort was like enough to be reinforced by coming events.
He adored good living, yet could exist on crusts.  He was intelligent,
yet did not like to be forced to think.  An overmastering sense of the
ludicrous inclined him to take the world lightly.  He liked ease, yet
delighted in adventure.  He distrusted his own temperament.  He had need
to do so.  Excitement was in the air.  The summer of ’92 was unquiet,
and pupils were less numerous, so that François found time to wander.
The autumn brought no change in his life, but Gamel became more and more
self-absorbed, and neglected his pupils.  The gentlemen who fenced in
the mornings began to disappear, and the new year of 1793 came in with
war without and tumult within distracted France.

For several days before the 21st of January, 1793, strange faces were
frequently seen in the morning hours, or more often late at night.
These passed into Gamel’s room, and remained long.  The marquis, more
thoughtful than usual, came and went daily. Early on the 20th, Gamel
told François that he should be absent until after the 21st, the day set
for the king to die.  François asked no questions, and was not deeply
grieved to be left in the dark as to what was in contemplation.  During
the previous week there had been sad faces in the morning hours.  The
pupils were fewer; they were leaving Paris—and too many were leaving
France.  The Jacobins, with whom François fenced in the latter part of
the day, were wildly triumphant.  They missed Gamel when he was absent,
and asked awkward questions.  It was plain enough to his assistant that
the master of this turbulent school was a Royalist _enragé_, as men then
said. The assistant was much of his mind, but he was also far more loyal
to one François than to the unfortunate king.

He was not surprised that at the hour of opening on the 21st no one
appeared.  He sat thinking, and a little sorry for the humbled Louis
rumbling over the crowded streets to his doom.  The prisons were already
becoming crowded; the richer bourgeoisie had become submissive.  The
more able and aggressive Jacobins were about to seize the reins of power
from the sentimental Girondists.

"Let us think a little," said François to his friend and counselor Toto.
The poodle woke up, and sat attentive.  "It is disagreeable to have to
think, _mon ami_; but there are our heads.  Without a head one cannot
eat or enjoy a bone.  Shall we go to the frontier, and be shot at, and
shoot?  _Dame!_ a thousand bullets to one guillotine.  We do not like
that.  Let us change our opinions, Toto, join the clubs, and talk
liberty. Yes; that is thy opinion.  Must we go back to the streets?  ’T
is good nowadays to be obscure, and thou art becoming a public
character, Toto."

He read the gazette awhile, practised with the pistol, and taught the
dog a new trick.  Still no one came, and the day wore on to noon.  At
this hour the bell rang, and the poodle barked, as was his custom.
"Learn to hold thy tongue," said the master.  The servant had gone, like
all Paris, to see a brave man die.

François opened the outer door.  A strongly built man he had never
before seen entered, and, pushing by him, went without a word into the
great room beyond.

"Hallo, citizen!  What dost thou want?" said François, following him.

"Art thou Citizen Gamel?"

François was not; and what could he do for the citizen?

The man for a moment made no reply, but glanced searchingly about the
hall, while the assistant looked him over as keenly.  He was a personage
not easily to be forgotten.

"No one else here?" he asked.

"No one."

The questioner was a man not over thirty-five, of colossal make, and
with something about him which Toto resented.  He began to bark, and
then, of a sudden, fled under a bench, and watched the newcomer.

His features were out of keeping with his height and breadth.  The
Jacobin had small, restless eyes, a diminutive nose, perhaps broken, and
a large-lipped mouth, which, as he talked, was drawn to one side as
though from some loss of power on the other half of the face.

"I am Jean Pierre André Amar," he said, with an air of importance.

"Will the citizen be seated?"

He would not.  He desired to see Citizen Gamel.

François regretted his absence on business.  Amar, later known as _le
farouche_, desired to see the list of pupils, in order to select an
unoccupied morning hour. Unluckily, the master had the keys.  The
citizen wished to fence, and could come in the morning only; he was busy
after that.  François would mention his name; perhaps the hours of the
morning were full, but Citizen Gamel would no doubt arrange.

The man with the wandering mouth stood in thought, said he would return,
and then asked abruptly:

"Art thou his assistant?"

"Yes."

"And thy name?"

"François."

"Has Citizen François a _carte-civique_—a certificate of citizenship?"

François knew better than to refuse.  "Fetch me the card, Toto.  ’T is
on the chair in my room. _Va_—go!"

"Thou art careless, Citizen François."

François, on this, became short of speech.  Toto ran back.  "Give it to
the citizen."

Amar took it, saying: "It is correct.  And so a dog is sent to fetch the
safeguard the people provide?"

[Illustration: "’AND SO A DOG IS SENT TO FETCH THE SAFEGUARD THE PEOPLE
PROVIDE?’"]

François laughed.  "The citizen is particular.  But here we are good
republicans, and have given our useful arms to the army, and think to go
soon ourselves.  Shall I give the citizen a lesson?"

No; he would call again.  The section wished the names of all who fenced
here.  As the citizen reached the door, he said, turning:

"Thou art the man who used to laugh in the show. Robespierre told me of
what fortune was read on his palm.  A great man.  Take care of thy own
fortune. Thou art not of the club.  It may be thou wilt laugh no more."
This while the distorted mouth went to left and came back, and the small
eyes winked and wandered.  François thanked him.  He would join the
club, the list should be ready, and so on.

When alone again, François began to reflect on what was likely to
happen.  At any time, Amar might return with a guard.  On the 23d, as
usual during this sad week, there were no morning pupils; and still
Gamel came not, and François had to manage the turbulent afternoon
pupils alone.

                                 *XIII*

_Citizen Amar, meeting the marquis, is unlucky and vindictive._

A fear vast and oppressive was upon the great city.  The white cockades
were gone.  François burned all he could find.  For a week no one came
to fence in the morning.  The afternoons were full, and there was much
inquiry for Citizen Gamel. On the night of the 24th of this terrible
January, 1793, François went out.  Paris was recovering, and, as usual,
forgetful, was eating and drinking and dancing, while all Europe was
ringing with the news of this murder of a good man too weak for a mighty
task.

When, later, François returned to the school of arms he smelt the odor
of a pipe.  "Ah!" he cried, "Toto, he has come.  ’T is none too soon."
Candles lighted dimly the large hall and the rooms beyond it.  He heard
no sounds, and, suddenly becoming uneasy, hastened to enter the little
salon.  It was empty, as were all the rooms.  On the bedroom floor lay
scattered clothes.  Scorched leaflets were fluttering like black crows
over the ashes of a dying fire.  They were fragments of burnt paper.  An
open desk was on the table, and everywhere were signs of haste.

François ran out to the kitchen, and called their only servant, a shrewd
old woman.  She said: "I heard thee, citizen.  I was coming to tell thee
that Citizen Gamel has gone."

"Gone!  _Mon Dieu!_"

"He has paid me, and well; and here is a box for thee, Citizen François.
I hid it under the mattress. Oh, I have waited, but I am afraid."

François took the box and its key, and went to his room.  The box
contained some five hundred francs in gold, and as much more in
assignats—the notes of the day, and really worth but little.  In a
folded package were papers and a letter.  It read thus:

"I am sorry to leave thee.  A business affair has failed, and I go
westward.  I risk this to warn thee to fly.  For two days thou art safe,
but not longer. If a gentleman calls whom thou knowest, and asks for
_Monsieur_ Achille Gamel, tell him all.  I inclose for thee a passport.
No matter how I got it.  It is good. Use it soon.  I divide with thee my
small store. Thou hast been honest; stay so.  We may meet in better
times."

François laughed.  "We must go, Toto.  Well, it has a good side; thou
wilt get thinner."  Then he read the passport.  It described him well:
Jean François, juggler ("Good!"), returning to Normandy; affairs of
family; a father dying.  "Good!  Now I have one parent at least."  It
was in due order. "Thou hast no papers, Toto; but thy black head is
secure."

At early morning on the 25th of January, he found a vender of
antiquities, and quickly sold him, for two hundred francs, the antique
arms in the fencing-room. He must remove them that coming night.  Next
he sought a maker of articles for the jugglers who were still to be
found in every town; for neither at this time nor during the Terror did
the people cease to amuse themselves.  François bought a set of gaily
tinted balls and the conjuring apparatus with which he was familiar.
Once again in his room, he packed his clothes in a knapsack and his
juggler’s material in a bag that he could carry.  A long cloak which his
master had left he set aside to take, and, thus prepared, felt that on
the whole he had better risk waiting until the dawn of the following day
before he set out on his wintry journey.  The old woman had already fled
in alarm.

On the following morning, at 9 A.M., François went into the great hall
to secure pistols and the fine Spanish rapier which Gamel had given him.
Here he paused, and re-read the passport.  A blank space had been left
for the insertion of the special locality to which the bearer might wish
to go in Normandy.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, "that must do.  I will go to Musillon.  Perhaps I
shall find Despard.  He will help me to recover that desirable papa."
He went back to Gamel’s room, and carefully completed the passport by
inserting the name of the village Musillon.

After this he returned to the hall, talking to the poodle as he went.
"Toto, thou art uneasy," he said; "and I too, my friend.  Remember to
howl no more at Jacobins.  Thou art of the Left, a dog of the Left.
_Tiens!_ the bell."  He caught up his rapier, and opened the door.  A
powerful, broad-shouldered man entered. He was clad in gray, and wore
the red bonnet the extreme Jacobins affected, and which Robespierre so
much despised.

"Ah, no one here.  That is well.  I trust Gamel has gone."

"Ah!" exclaimed François to himself.  "’T is my confounded marquis.  Now
for ill luck."

"Is Monsieur Gamel at home?  _Monsieur_ Achille Gamel?"  He emphasized
the title.

François understood, with no great amazement, that this was the man of
whom Gamel’s letter spoke.  He replied, "This way, please, monsieur."

The gentleman followed without a word.

"Read this," said François; "and, pardon me, but read it quickly.  My
head appears to me to be less securely attached to my body than common."

"_Dame_!  You are as jolly as ever, my delightful thief."

"I beg that monsieur will read this letter, and at once.  _Nom de ciel!_
there is no time to be lost."  And still he laughed.  "We are in a trap,
monsieur."

The marquis was not to be hurried; it was not his way.  "St. Gris! you
can laugh.  I envy you.  In France men grin, for they must; but laughter
is dead. Ah!" and he fell to considering the letter.  Then he folded it
deliberately.  "Burn it," he said.  "So; that is well; and now, my good
thief, I came to warn Gamel.  He has wisely fled.  Of course there was a
plot, and, as usual, it failed.  You, who are not in it, are like enough
to pay other folks’ debts.  I have a certain mild interest in honest
rascality.  You are a marked man.  No cabbage of the field is more sure
of the knife.  Go, and soon."

"I have heard from Gamel, monsieur.  He assured me that I was safe here
for a day or two—I know not how he knew that."

"I do, but I scarcely share his confidence.  Go soon."

"I shall go at dawn to-morrow."

"No; go to-day—this evening."

"I will.  Monsieur will pardon me if I ask if madame, monsieur’s
daughter, is well and safe? There are few who have been kind to me,
and—"

"My child is well," said the marquis, "and in Normandy; but if safe or
not, who can say, while these wolves destroy women and children?  Safe!
I would give my soul to be sure of that."  His face showed the transient
emotion he felt; and suddenly, as if annoyed at his own weakness, he
drew himself up and said abruptly: "Go—and go quickly!  I shall leave at
once—"

At this moment the bell rang violently.

"The devil!" cried the marquis.  "Go and see, and do not shut the inner
door; I must hear."  With this he entered the pistol-gallery and waited.
François obeyed, and, with the sheathed rapier still in his hand,
crossed the hall.  Again the bell rang.

"He is in a mischief of a hurry.  No noise, Toto!"

As he opened the outer door, the man of the warped face broke in, and,
passing him at once, walked across the little reception-room and into
the great hall beyond.  Again his height and massive build struck the
fencing-master.

"Where is Gamel, citizen?—and no lies to me! Where is Gamel, I say?"

"He has gone away.  Why, I do not know.  Will the citizen search his
rooms?"

"Search!  Not I.  I will call the municipals. What are those rooms over
there?  And arms!  Why have they not been sent to the committee for our
patriot children on the frontier?"

"Perhaps Citizen Amar would kindly inspect them, and then, if required,
we can send them.  Many have been already sent.  Behold, citizen, a
war-club of Ashantee, a matchlock, a headsman’s sword. _Parbleu!_ the
guillotine is better."

"I see, citizen; I see.  But now of Gamel.  He was to be here to-day, I
hear.  I will return presently with the officers; and, friend citizen,
it will be well for thee to assist, and heartily.  This Gamel was in
some plot to save the Citizen Capet.  Like master, like man. Have ready
the lists of those aristocrats who fence here in the morning.  Thou
canst save thy head by making a clean breast of it.  I shall return in
half an hour.  Have everything ready."

At this the dreaded Jacobin, having looked over the arms and duly
impressed the fencing-master, moved toward the door of exit.  Should
Amar leave the room, François felt that his own fate was certain. He had
been too much with Gamel.  Less things every day cost the heads of men.
There was death or life in the next five minutes.  François was not one
to hesitate.  Preceding the Jacobin, he quietly set his back to the
door, and, locking it, put the key in his pocket.  This action was so
dexterous and swift that for a moment the Jacobin did not perceive that
he was trapped.  He was thinking if there was anything more to be said.
He looked up.  "Well, open the door, citizen."  As he spoke, the two
strangest faces in Paris were set over against each other.  Here was
comedy, with long lean features, twinkling eyes above, and below the
good humor of a capacious mouth set between preposterous ears.  And
there was tragedy, strong of jaw, long hair lying flat in black,
leech-like flakes on a too prominent brow, and small eyes, deep-set,
restless, threatening, seen like those of a wolf in cave shelters—a face
no man trusted, a face on which all expressions grew into deformity; not
a mere beast; a terribly intelligent bigot of the new creed, colossal,
alert, unsparing, fearless, full of vanity.

When the citizen commissioner said, "Open," François replied:

"Not just yet, citizen."

"What is this?" shouted Amar.  "Open, I say, in the name of the law!"

"Not I."  And François, with a quick motion, threw off the sheath of the
rapier.  It fell with a great clatter on the far side of the room.

"Open, I say!"

At this moment Ste. Luce came across the hall.

"What the deuce is all this, François?"

Amar turned his square shoulders, and looked at the marquis.

"I presume thee, too, to be one of this rascal Gamel’s band.  If thou
dost think I, Pierre Amar, am afraid of thee, thou art going to find out
thy mistake.  What is thy name?"

"Go to the devil!" cried the marquis.  The Jacobin darted toward the
window; but François was too quick for him, and instantly had him by the
collar, the point of the rapier touching his back.  "Move a step, and
thou art a dead man."  The face, crooked with passion, half turned over
the shoulder.

"Misery!  What a beauty!  Didst thou think I valued my head so little as
to trust thee, scum of the devil’s dish-water?"  For some reason this
huge animal filled François with rage, and he poured out a flood of the
abusive slang of the Cité as the marquis came up.

"Drop that window-curtain!" said the thief.  "And now, what to do,
monsieur?"

The captured man showed the utmost courage, and no small lack of wisdom.
"Dog of an aristocrat!  I know thee.  It was thou didst kill Jean
Coutier, last month.  I saw thee, coward!  We knew not thy name.  Now we
shall take pay for that murder."

The marquis grew white to the eyes, with a certain twitching of the lips
to be seen as François again asked:

"What shall we do with him?  Shall we tie him?"

"No; kill him.  What! you will not?  Give me your rapier.  ’T is but one
wolf less."

François was more than unwilling.  The intense hatred of the noble for
the Jacobin he did not share; indeed, he liked the man’s fearlessness,
but, nevertheless, meant to provide for his own security.  His
conscience, such as it was, refused to sanction cold-blooded murder.

"I cannot.  Go away!  I will take care of this rascal."

"There is no time to lose," said the marquis. "Kill the brute."

"Not I," said François.

"Thou art coward enough to kill a man in cold blood!" cried Amar.  "This
is the fine honor you talk of.  Better go.  All thy kind are running;
but, soon or late, the guillotine will get thy hog-head, as it did thy
Jew-nosed king’s."

"The face and the tongue are well matched," said Ste. Luce, quietly.
"It will take a good ten minutes to tie and gag him.  You will not kill
him?  Then give the fellow a blade, and—I will see to the rest. Are you
man enough to take my offer?  Quick, now!"

"Try me.  I am no weakling, like poor Coutier."

"Find him a blade, François.  I will watch him. Be quick!"  He took the
rapier, and stood by the motionless figure, whose uneasy eyes followed
the thief as he went and came again.

"The blades are of a length, François?  Yes.  Lock the door.  Ah, it is
done.  Good!  Now, keep an eye on him, François.  Take care of yourself
if he has the luck to kill me.  However, that is unlikely.  Ah, you have
a sword, François."

"The citizen talks a good deal," said Amar, trying his blade on the
floor.

"Yes," said the marquis, negligently untying his cravat.  "It is so
rare, in these democratic days, that one has a chance to talk with one
of you gentlemen."

"Bah!" cried the Jacobin, "we shall see presently."  As he spoke, he
laid his sword on a chair and began to strip.  As he took off his coat
and waistcoat, he folded them with care, and laid them neatly on a
bench.

The marquis also stripped to his waistcoat, but it was with more haste.
He threw his coat to François, and took his place in the middle of the
room, where he waited until his slower antagonist, in shirt and
breeches, came forward to meet him.  Both believed it to be a duel to
the death, but neither face showed to François any sign of anxiety.  The
Jacobin said:

"The light is in thine eyes, citizen.  If we were to move so as to
engage across the room—"

"It is of no moment," returned the marquis.  "Are you ready?"

"Yes."

François saw no better method of disposing of an awkward business.
Nevertheless, he was uncomfortable. "What if this devil should kill the
marquis?"  He cried, "On guard, messieurs!" and stepped aside.

The marquis saluted with grave courtesy; but the Jacobin, obeying the
fashion of the schools of fence, went through the formula of appearing
to draw the sword, and certain other conventional motions supposed to be
exacted by etiquette.  The marquis smiled as Amar led off in this
ceremonious fashion.  These preliminaries of the _salle d’armes_ were
usually omitted or curtailed in serious combats.  The seigneur, amused,
and following Amar’s lead, went through the whole performance.
Meanwhile François looked the two men over, and was not ill pleased.
This heavy fellow should prove no match for a practised duelist like
Ste. Luce.  He was soon undeceived.

Both men were plainly enough masters of their weapon, and for at least
two minutes there was no advantage.  Then Ste. Luce was touched in the
left shoulder, and a distorted grimace of satisfaction ran over the face
of the Jacobin.  The marquis became more careful, and a minute or two
later François saw with pleasure that Amar was breathing a trifle hard.
He had half a mind to cry: "Wait! wait!  He is feeling the strain."  He
held his peace, and, with Toto, looked on in silence.  The marquis knew
his business well, and noted the quickening chest movements of his
adversary.  He began to smile, and to make a series of inconceivably
quick lunges.  Now and then the point of either blade struck fair on the
convex steel shell-like guard which protected the hand. When this
chanced, a clear, sweet note as of a bell rang through the great hall.
The Jacobin held his own, and François, despite his anxiety, saw with
the satisfaction of a master how lightly each rapier lay in the grasp of
the duelist, and how dexterously the fingers alone were used to guide
the blades.

Of a sudden the strange face was jerked as it were to left, and a savage
lunge in tierce came perilously near to ending the affair.  Ste. Luce
threw himself back with the quickness of a boy.  The point barely
touched him.  "St. Gris!" he called out gaily. "That was well meant.
Now take care!"

"By St. Denis! ’t is a master," muttered François. The marquis seemed of
a sudden to have let loose a reserve of unlooked-for power.  He was here
and there about the massive and by no means unready bulk of Amar, swift
and beautifully graceful.

Then of a sudden the marquis’s blade went out as quick as lightning, and
just at the limit of a nearly futile thrust caught Amar over the right
eye.  "_Dame_! I missed those lanterns of hell!"

The Jacobin brushed away the blood which, running down his face, made
his right eye useless for the time.

The marquis fell back, and dropped his point. "The deuce!  The man
cannot see.  Tie a handkerchief around his head."

The Jacobin was not sorry to have time to breathe.

"Thou art more than fair, citizen," said Amar, getting his breath.

"Thanks," returned the marquis, coldly.  "Make haste, François."

François took up a lace handkerchief which lay beside Ste. Luce’s coat
on the seat where he had cast his clothes.  While François bound the
handkerchief around the head so as to stop the flow of blood, Amar
turned to his foe.

"Citizen," said the Jacobin, "thou hast been a gallant man in this
matter.  My life was thine to take. Let it end here.  Thou art a brave
man and a good blade."

Ste. Luce looked at him with an expression of amused curiosity.

"What else?"

"I will not have thee pursued—on my honor."

"Tie it firmly, François.  You have just heard, my François, of the last
Parisian novelty—a Jacobin’s honor!  Be so good as to hurry, François."

Had the stern Jacobin felt some sudden impulse of pity or respect?  In
all his after days he was unsparing, and certainly it was not fear which
now moved him.

"As pleases thee," he said simply.  Ste. Luce made no answer.  Again
their blades met.  And now the marquis changed his game, facing his foe
steadily, while François gazed in admiration.  Ste. Luce’s rapier was
like a lizard’s movements for quickness.  Twice he touched the man’s
chest, and by degrees drove him back, panting, until he was against the
door.  Suddenly, seeming to recover strength, the Jacobin lunged in
quarte, and would have caught the marquis fair in the breast-bone had he
not thrown himself backward as he felt the prick.  Instantly he struck
the blade aside with his open left hand, and, as it went by his left
side, drove his rapier savagely through Amar’s right lung and into the
panel of the door.  It was over.  Not ten minutes had passed.

"_Dame!_" he cried, withdrawing his rapier, and retreating a pace or
two.  "He was worth fighting."

The Jacobin’s face moved convulsively.  He coughed, spattering blood
about him.  His right arm moved in quick jerks.  His sword dropped, and
stuck upright in the floor, quivering.

"Dog of an aristocrat!" he cried.  His distorted face twitched; he
staggered to left, to right, and at last tumbled in a heap, a massive
figure, of a sudden inert and harmless.

[Illustration: "HE STAGGERED TO LEFT, TO RIGHT, AND AT LAST TUMBLED IN A
HEAP."]

The marquis stood still and looked down at his foe.

"What the deuce to do with him?" said François.

"Take his head, and drag him into your room.  We can talk then."

"Will monsieur take his feet?"

"What!  _I_ touch the dog?  No, not I."

François did not like it; but making no reply, he dragged the Jacobin’s
helpless bulk after him, and, once in his room, pulled the mattress off
the bed, and without roughness drew the man upon it.

Amar opened his eyes, and tried to speak.  He could not; the flow of
blood choked him.  He shook his fist at Ste. Luce.

"Cursed brute," cried François, "be still!  He will begin to howl
presently.  The sons of Satan are immortal."

"We must gag him, François."

"But he will die; he will choke.  See how he breathes—how hard."

"_Diable!_ it is he or I.  Would he spare me, do you think?  Don’t talk
nonsense.  Do as I tell you."

François took up a towel.  As he approached, Amar looked up at him.
There was no plea in his savage face.

"Go on.  What the deuce are you waiting for?" said Ste. Luce.

"I cannot do it," said François.  "End it yourself."

"What!  I?  Strangle a dog!  I!  _Dame_!  Let us go.  What a fool you
are!"

"Better go singly, then," said the thief.  He had no mind to increase
his own risks by the dangerous society of the nobleman.

Amar was silent.  The handkerchief had fallen from his head, but the
wound bled no longer.

"What shall I do with the handkerchief, monsieur?"

"Do?  Burn it.  Faugh!"  François cast it on the still glowing embers.
"Now my clothes and my cloak," said Ste. Luce; "and do not lose any time
over that animal."

He washed off the little blood on his clothes, and dressed in haste,
saying: "Lucky that his point struck on my breast-bone.  ’T is of no
moment.  The fellow has left me a remembrance.  I am sorry I did not
have the luck to kill him.  Good-by, François.  May we meet in better
days."  He was gone.

François locked the door after him, and went back to his room.  He sat
down on the floor beside the mattress.

"Now listen, Master Amar.  Canst thou hear me? Ah, yes.  Well, I have
saved thy life.  Oh, thou wilt get well,—more ’s the pity!—and do some
mischief yet.  Now if I should kill thee I would be pretty safe.  If I
go away, and send thee a doctor, I am a lost man.  What is that thou art
saying?  Ah!" and he leaned down to hear the broken whisper.  "So thou
wilt have my head chopped off.  Thou art less afraid than I would be,
were I thee.  What shall we do, Toto?" and he laughed; somehow the
situation had for him its humorous side.

"I can’t murder a man," he said.  "If ever I kill a man, I trust it may
be one who hath not thy eyes and thy one-sided grin.  To be haunted by a
ghost like thee!  The deuce!  Not I!  _Sac à papier_!  I will take my
chance."  He sat down, and wrote a short note to a surgeon on the
farther side of Paris, one whom he knew to have been much commended to
his pupils by Gamel.

"My unforgiving friend," he said, "I shall lock thee in.  Thou art too
weak to move, and to try will cause thee to bleed.  This note will get
thee a surgeon in about six hours.  I must leave thee.  Be quiet, and be
good.  Here is a flask of _eau-de-vie_.  Art still of a mind to give thy
preserver to the guillotine?"  The grim head nodded as the red froth
leaked out over the lips.  "’Yes, yes,’ thou sayest.  Thou art in a fine
state of penitence.  I hope we have seen the last of each other.  One
more chance.  Promise me not to be my enemy.  I will trust thee.  Come,
now."

But the Jacobin was past speech.  As François knelt beside him, he
beckoned feebly.

"What is it?"  As he bent lower, a grim smile went over the one movable
side of Amar’s face, and, raising a feeble hand, he drew it across
François’s neck.

"_Mon Dieu!_" cried he, recoiling, "thou art ripe for hell.  Adieu, my
unforgiving friend; and as thou hast no God, _au diable_, and may St.
Satan look after thee—for love of thy looks.  Come, doggie!"  He put his
pistols in the back of his belt, set his rapier in the belt-catch, threw
his cloak over all, and picked up his bag and knapsack.  He took one
last look at Amar, and saying, "By-by, my angel," left him, locking both
doors as he went out.

François passed into the street, followed by the black poodle.  In the
Rue St. Honoré he paid the boy of a butcher with whom Gamel dealt to
take his note when the midday meal should be over.  And thus having
eased his conscience and regulated the business of life, he set out to
put between him and the Jacobin as many miles as his long legs could
cover.

                                 *XIV*

_François escapes from Paris and goes in search of a father.  He meets a
man who has a wart on his nose, and who because of this is unlucky._

He had been fortunate.  Not more than an hour and a quarter had gone by
since Amar’s entrance, and the mid-hour of breakfast had probably
secured them from intrusion of foe or friend.  François, who knew Paris
as few men did, strode on through narrow streets and the dimly lighted
passages which afforded opportunity to avoid the busier haunts of men.
The barriers were carelessly guarded, and he passed unmolested into the
country.  Once outside of the city, he took the highroad to Evreux, down
the Seine, simply because the passport of Jean François, juggler,
pointed to Normandy as his destination. Naturally a man of forethinking
sense, he had assumed that the village whence came Despard should be the
home of that father who was ill.  He knew from his former partner enough
of the village to answer questions.  It lay westward of Evreux.  France
was then less full of spies and less suspicious than it became in the
Terror; and until he arrived at a small town on the north bank of the
Seine, not far from Poissy, he had no trouble.  He saw no couriers.  The
post went only once a week.  He was safe, and, to tell the truth, merry
and well pleased again to wander.  His money was sewed in his garments.
He wore his rapier under his cloak, but with it he carried the
conjurer’s thin, supple blade, which, when he feigned to swallow it, a
spring caused to coil into the large basket-hilt.  His pistols were
strapped behind him, and on his back he carried his knapsack and small
bag of juggling apparatus.  Thus, clad in sober gray, with the tricolor
on his red cap and a like decoration on the poodle’s collar, he was
surely a quaint enough figure.  Long, well built, and wiry, laughing
large between his two wing-like ears, he held his way along the highroad
on the bank of the winding Seine.

He avoided towns and people, camped in the woods, juggled and told
fortunes at farm-houses for a dinner, and, as I have said, had no
trouble until he came at midday to the hamlet of Île Rouge.  Here, being
tired, and Toto footsore, he thought he might venture to halt and sleep
at the inn.

It was a little gray French town in the noonday quiet, scarce a soul in
sight, and a warmer sun than January usually affords on street and
steaming roof-tiles.  Hostile dogs, appearing, seemed to consider Toto a
Royalist.  François tucked him under his arm, and carelessly entered the
stone-paved tap-room of the "Hen with Two Heads."  He repented too late.
The room was half full.  One of the many commissioners who afterward
swarmed through France was engaged with the mayor of the commune.
François, putting on an air of humility, sought out the innkeeper, and
asked meekly to have a room.  As he did so, a fat man in the red bonnet
of the Jacobins called out from the table where he sat, "Come here!"

François said, "Yes, citizen," and stood at the table where this
truculent person was seated.

He was sharply questioned, and his papers and baggage were overhauled
with small ceremony, while, apparently at his ease, he liberally
distributed smiles and the kindly glances of large blue eyes.  At last
he was asked why he carried a sword; it was against the law.  He made
answer that he carried two tools of his trade—would the citizen see?
And when he had swallowed two feet of his juggler’s blade, to the wonder
of the audience, nothing further was said of the rapier.  At last,
seeing that the commissioner still hesitated, he told, with great show
of frankness, whither he was going, and named Despard as one who would
answer for him.  The mention of this name seemed to annoy the
questioner, who said Despard was a busy fellow, and was stirring up the
citizens at Musillon.  He, Grégoire, was on his way to see after him.
He should like to make the acquaintance of that sick father, and, after
all, François might be an _émigré_. He must wait, and go with the
commissioner to Musillon.

François smiled his best; and, when the citizen commissioner had done
with business, might he amuse him with a little juggling?  Citizen
Grégoire would see; let him sit yonder and wait.  After a few minutes
the great man’s breakfast was set before him; the room was cleared, and
the citizen ate, while François looked him over.

[Illustration: "HE HELD HIS WAY ALONG THE HIGHROAD."]

Grégoire was a short, stout man with long hair, a face round, red,
chubby, and made expressionless by a button-nose, which was decorated
with a large rugose wart.  The meal being over, he went out, leaving a
soldier at the door, and taking no kind of note of his prisoner.
François sat still.  He was patient, but the afternoon was long.  At
dusk Citizen Grégoire reappeared, and, as François noted, was a little
more amiable by reason of the vinous hospitality of the mayor.  He sat
down, and ordered dinner. When it came, François said tranquilly:

"Citizen Commissioner Grégoire, wouldst thou kindly consider the state
of my stomach?  Swallowing of swords sharpens the appetite."

The commissioner looked up from his meal.  He was in the good-humored
stage of drunkenness.

"Come and eat," he said, laughing.

"He hath the benevolence of the bottle," thought François.  "Let us
amuse him."

The commissioner took off his red bonnet, poured out a glass of wine,
looked at a paper or two in his hand-bag, and set it on a seat near by,
while the juggler humbly accepted the proffered place.  Then the poodle
was made to howl at the name of Citizen Capet, and to bark joyously at
the mention of Jacobins. François told stories, played tricks, and drank
freely. The commissioner drank yet more freely.  François proposed to
make a punch,—a juggler’s punch,—and did make a drink of uncommon vigor.
About nine the commissioner began to nod, and François, who had been
closely studying his face, presently saw him drop into a deep slumber.
The open bag looked tempting.  He swiftly slipped a dexterous hand into
its contents, and feeling a wallet of coin, transferred it to his own
pocket.  The temptation had been great, the yielding to it imprudent;
but there was no one else about, except the careless guard outside the
door. François concluded to replace the wallet; but at this moment the
great Grégoire of the committee woke up. "That was funny," he said.  "I
did not quite catch the end of it."

"No," said François; "the citizen slept a little."

Grégoire became angry.

"I—I asleep?  I am on duty.  I never sleep on duty."  The citizen was
very drunk.  He got up, and, staggering, set a foot on Toto’s tail.  The
poodle yelped, and the Jacobin kicked him.  "_Sacrée béte!_"  The
poodle, unaccustomed to outrage, retorted by a nip at a fat calf.  Then
the great man asserted himself.

"Hallo, there!  Curse you and your dog! Landlord! landlord!"  The host
came in haste, and two soldiers.  "Got a safe place?  Lock up this
sc-scoundrel, and k-kill his dog!"  The landlord kindly suggested a
disused wine-cellar.  "Now, no delay.  I’m Grégoire.  Lock him up!"
Having disposed of the juggler, the citizen contrived to get out of the
room and to bed with loss of dignity and balance.

A few minutes sufficed to set François in a chilly cellar, the poodle at
his heels; for no one took seriously the order to kill Toto.  Of the two
soldiers, one, who was young and much amused, brought an old blanket,
and a lantern with a lighted candle set within it.  Yes, the prisoner
could have his knapsack and bag—there were no orders; but he must give
up his sword.  It was so dark that when François promptly surrendered
his juggler’s blade it seemed to satisfy the soldiers; for who could
dream that a man would carry two swords?  With a laugh and a jest,
François bade them to wake him early.  He called to the young recruit,
as they were leaving, that he would like to have a bottle of wine, and
gave him sufficient small change to insure also a bottle for these
good-humored jailers.

They took the whole affair as somewhat of a practical joke.  All would
be well in the morning. When Grégoire was drunk he arrested everybody.
The young soldier would fetch the wine in an hour. Good night.

François was alone and with leisure to consider the situation.

"Attention, Toto!" he said.  This putting of thought into an outspoken
soliloquy, with the judicial silence of the poodle to aid him, was
probably a real assistance; for to think aloud formulates conditions and
conclusions in a way useful to one untrained to reason.  To read one’s
own mind, and to hear one’s own mind, are very different things.

"Toto," he said, "we are in a bad way.  Why didst thou bite that fat
beast’s calf?  It did thee no good, thou ill-tempered brute.  ’T is not
good diet; a pound of it would make thee drunk.  I shall have to whip
thee, little beast of an aristocrat, if thou dost take to nipping the
calves of the republic."

Toto well knew that he was being scolded.  He leaped up and licked the
thief’s face.

"Down, Citizen Toto!  Where are thy manners? I like better Citizen
Grégoire drunk than Citizen Grégoire sober.  How about my poor papa?
Oh, but I was an ass to name Despard.  Didst thou observe that the
commissioner’s eyebrows meet?  And, Toto, he has a great wart on his
nose.  ’T is a man will fetch ill luck.  I knew a thief had a wart on
his nose, and he was broken on the wheel at Rouen.  Besides, there was
the wallet.  Toto, attention!  Thou dost wander.  It is all the doings
of that _sacré_ marquis.  _À bas les aristocrates_!  Let us inspect a
little."  Upon this he pried about every corner, tried the heavy oaken
door, still gaily talking, and at last sat on an empty cask and
considered the grated window and the limited landscape dimly visible
between its four iron rods.  The end of a woodpile, about four feet
away, was all that he could see.  This woodpile set him to thinking.

An hour later the young recruit returned with the wine.  "I came to see
if thou wert safe," he said. "Like as not Grégoire will forget all about
thee to-morrow.  Wine hath a short memory."

François laughed.  "_Le bon Dieu_ grant it.  I can tell fortunes, but
not my own."  And should he tell the citizen soldier’s fortune?  With
much laughter it was told, and the gifts of fateful time were showered
on the soldier’s future in opulent abundance.  He would be with the army
on the frontier soon.  He would marry—_dame!_—a woman rich in looks and
lands.  He would be a general one day.  And this, oddly enough, came
true; for he became a general of division, and was killed the morning
after at Eylau.  Seeing that this young man had agreeable fashions, the
thief ventured to express his thanks.

"Monsieur—" he began.

"Take care!  _Mon Dieu!_ thou must not say that; ’citizen,’ please.  The
messieurs are as dead as the saints, and the devil, and the _bon Dieu_,
and the rest."

As he did not seem displeased, François said:

"Oh, thou art no Jacobin.  Hast a _De_ to thy name?"

This recruit’s manners appeared to François a good deal like those of
the young nobles whom he had taught to fence.

"What I was is of no moment," replied the young fellow.  "The _De’s_ are
as dead as the saints.  I am a soldier.  But, pardon me, the citizen may
be as frank as suits his appetite for peril.  I have had my bellyful."

"Frank?  _Dame!_ why not?  Up-stairs I was a Jacobin; down here I am a
Royalist.  I was an aide in Gamel’s fencing-school, and, _pardie!_ I
came away. Thou canst do me a little service."

"Can I help thee, and not hurt myself?  We—my people—are grown scarce of
late.  I am the last; I take no risks."

"There will be none.  Bring me a little steel fork and a good long bit
of twine."

"A fork!  What for?"  He had a lad’s curiosity.

"To eat with."

"But there is nothing to eat."

"Quite true.  But it assists one’s imagination; and, after all, there
may be to-morrow, and to eat with decency a fork is needed.  A citizen
may use his bare paws, but a monsieur may not use the fingers of
equality. Thou wilt observe how the thought of these tools of luxury
reminds one of messieurs and the like."

The lad—he was hardly over twenty—laughed merrily.  "Thou art a
delightful companion. Gamel—thou didst say Gamel?"

"I did, monsieur.  Gamel that was the master of arms in the Rue St.
Honoré."

"My poor brother used to fence there.  By St. Denis! thou must be
François!"

"I am."

"Then thou shalt have the tool of luxury.  But, good heavens! take care.
Thou hast a tongue which—well, I have learned to bridle mine."

"My tongue never got me into trouble; like my legs, it is long, and,
like them, it has got me out of a good many scrapes.  I thank thee for
the warning. One knows whom to talk to.  I can be silent.  Oh, you may
laugh.  I did not speak for a day after I first saw that juggler’s tool,
the guillotine, in the sun on the Place de la Révolution.  _Dieu!_
behold there is a man that talks and laughs; and, presto, pass! there is
eternal silence."

"_Âme de St. Denis!_ thou art not gay," cried the soldier.

"_Tête de St. Denis_ were better.  He was a fellow for these times—a
saint that could carry his head under his arm when it was chopped off."

The young recruit laughed, but more uneasily. Not to laugh in some
fashion was among the impossibilities of life when this face-quake of
mirth broke out between those wing-like ears.

He would fetch the tools, and, in fact, did so in a few minutes.  Then
he bade François good night, and went away.  As soon as he had gone,
François retired to a corner with his lantern to inspect the wallet.
There were three louis, a few sous, and no more.  The risk was large,
the profit small.  In an inner pocket was a thin, folded paper.  When
opened it seemed to be a letter in due form, dated a month before, but
never sent.  It was addressed to Citizen de la Vicomterie of the Great
Committee.  François whistled.  It was a furious attack on Robespierre
and Couthon, and an effort to sum up the strength which an assault on
the great leaders would command in the Convention—a rash document for
those days.  Clearly the writer, whose full signature of Pierre Grégoire
was appended, had wisely hesitated to send it.

"It seems to have been forgotten.  Was he drunk, Toto?  Surely now we
must get out and away.  ’T is a letter of death; ’t is a passport worth
many louis, Toto."  He pulled off a shoe, folded the paper neatly, and
pulling up a tongue of leather on the inside sole, placed the letter
underneath, and put on the shoe again.  He took the louis, threw the
wallet under a cask, and waited.

When the house was still he set to work.  He had found behind a barrel a
long staff used to measure the height of wine in casks.  On the end of
this he tied securely, crosswise, the steel fork, and then began to
inspect the thin rods of the window, which were but ill fitted to guard
a man of resources.

"Art still too fat?" he said, as he lifted Toto and managed to squeeze
him between the bars.  After that he began to fish with his stick and
fork for a small log which had fallen from the woodpile and was just a
foot or two out of reach.  Twice he had it, and twice it broke loose,
but now Toto understood, and, seizing the log, dragged it nearer.  At
last François had the prize.  The rest was easy.  He set the log between
the thin bars, and threw on this lever all the power of one of the
strongest men in Paris.  In place of breaking, the iron rod bent and
drew out of its sockets.  A second proved as easy, and at last the
window-space was free.  It seemed large enough.  He concluded to leave
his bag; but the knapsack he set outside, and also his weapons and the
conjuring-balls.  Next he stripped off most of his clothes, and laid
these too on the far side of the window.  Finally his legs were through,
and his hips.  But when it came to the shoulders he was in trouble.  It
seemed impossible. He felt the poor poodle pulling at his foot, and had
hard work to restrain his laughter.  "_Dame!_ would I grin at _Mère
Guillotine_?  Who knows?  How to shrink?"  He wriggled; he emptied his
chest of air; he turned on his side; and, leaving some rags and a good
bit of skin on the way, he was at last outside. Here, having reclothed
himself, he broke up the wine-measurer and threw the fork over the wall.
In a few minutes he was on the highway, and running lightly at the top
of his speed.  At dawn he found a farm-house which seemed to be
deserted—no rare thing in those days.  He got in at a window, and stayed
for two days, without other food than the crusts he had carried from the
cellar.  The night after, weak and hungry, he walked till dawn; and
being now a good ten leagues from that terrible commissioner, he
ventured to buy a good dinner and to get himself set over the Seine.
Somewhat reassured, he asked the way to Evreux, and, for once in his
life perplexed and thoughtful, went along without a word to Toto.

He had been three weeks on the way, owing to his need to hide or to make
wide circuits in order to avoid the larger towns.  It was now the
February of northern France, and there was sometimes a little snow, but
more often a drizzling rain.  He had suffered much from cold; but as he
strode along, with a mind more at ease, he took pleasure in the
sunshine.  A night wind from the north had dried the roads.  It was
calm, cold in the shadows, deliriously warm on the sun-lit length of
yellow highway.  He had lost time,—quite too much,—but he still hoped to
reach Musillon before that man with the wart arrived.  If so, he would
see Despard, warn him as to Grégoire, and, with this claim, and their
old partnership, on which he counted less, he might get his passport
altered, and lose himself somewhere.  If he had to remain in the town,
he must see, or be presumed to have seen, that sick father, and must be
promptly adopted if by cruel circumstances he became unable to journey
far enough from Paris to feel secure.  The distorted face of Amar
haunted him—the man who, to save his own life, would not even make
believe to forgive.  He had no power within him to explain a man like
Amar; and because the Jacobin was to him incomprehensible, he was more
than humanly terrible.  What possessed that devil of a marquis to turn
up!  And was he now at his château?  And why had Achille Gamel set down
Normandy in the passport?  And why had he himself been fool enough to
fill up the vacant place for the name of his destination with that of
the only small town he could recall in that locality?  He had been in
haste, and now a net seemed to be gathering about him.  He must go
thither, or take perilous chances.  He was moving toward a fateful hour.

"Toto," he said, "let us laugh; for I like not the face of to-morrow."

                                  *XV*

_How François finds Despard and has a lesson in politics, and of what
came of it._

At evening he ventured to enter an inn at Soluce.  A good bed and ample
diet restored his courage; but he learned that the citizen with a wart,
and an escort of a dozen soldiers, had passed the day before, on their
way to Bvreux.  Would he remain there, this friendly commissioner?  No
one knew. Evreux was Jacobin to the core.  Then he thought of the
marquis; it was well to be informed.

Yes; the Citizen Ste. Luce lived beyond Musillon.

The citizen juggler declared that he had once been in his service, but
now that all men were equal, he could not lower the dignity of an
equalized nation by serving him longer.  He learned that the château of
the marquis had not suffered, nor he, as he was never known to be
absent, and no one molested him.  This did not surprise François.  In
the South, at an earlier date, the peasants had burned hundreds of
châteaux, but these riots had been mercilessly put down.  The Jacobins
meant to have peace in France, and at cost of blood, if that was
requisite.  To have peace at home was essential to the success of
national defense on the frontier.  In many parts of France, throughout
the whole of the Terror, very many large land-owners were undisturbed.
In fact, the Terror, and its precedent punishments, fell with strange
irregularity on the provinces.  The Dukes de Bethune-Charost, de Luynes,
de Nivernais, and others who had not been active in politics, remained
unhurt on their estates. For the _émigrés_ was reserved a bitter hatred.
Nor can we wonder at this result of the vast exodus which took place
from ’89 to ’91—"_l’émigration joyeuse_," as it was called by those who
carried off means enough to live gay lives in Brussels while their
country was in the convulsions of great social and political change.

François made haste to leave at dawn, and by nightfall was close to the
town of Musillon.  He found a wood road, and was soon deep in one of the
marquis’s forests.  In a quiet glade among rocks he put his effects in
security, and, charging Toto to guard them, set out to inspect the town.
The poodle did not like it.  He ran back and forth, whining.

"Oh, stop that!" cried François.  "Go back! Dost thou hear?"

Toto lay down, and set himself to secure what comfort the situation
afforded.

Meanwhile François took to the main road until close to the village, and
then left it for the fields, cautiously nearing the town, a small place
of some twelve hundred souls.  A monotonous double line of scattered
one-story stone houses lay along the highway. Avoiding the village,
François moved past and around the red-roofed Norman farm-houses which
lay off from the main highway.  Mounds of earth set around the houses
walled in an orchard and an inclosure of many acres, so that, seen from
the exterior, they had the appearance of being fortified.  The lights
were out, and François saw no one.  Now and then a sentinel dog barked
as the wanderer went by the gateways, in wonder at this unusual style of
fence.  At last he turned again toward the road.

The town was quiet.  It was after nine at night. Having purposely
lingered thus long, François approached the back of the inn, and became
sure that it was empty of guests.  A little beyond it was the village
church, and as this was lighted, he approached it with care.  The
crosses of the burial-ground were gone.  He stumbled over graves, and at
last, standing on a tomb, got a fair glimpse of the interior of the
church, for many of its windows were broken.  It was full of people, and
the murmur of noisy debate came to his ears.  He felt that he must learn
what was going on.  With this in view, he kept under the deep shadow of
the wall, and soon saw that the outer porch was crowded with men and
women, listening through the open door.  Favored by the darkness, he got
unobserved into this mass of deeply occupied people, and was able at
last to catch a little of what was going on.  Yes; this was the club of
Jacobins which his partner Despard had been sent to organize, one of the
hundreds which soon conquered and led opinion all through the provinces.

He caught the usual denunciation of _émigrés_ and of the _ci-devant_
aristocrats.  He had heard it all before; it did not help him.

Very soon an elderly man in peasant dress arose near the door.  He spoke
of something which they had considered as well to be done soon.  He
thought it better to wait until Citizen Commissioner Grégoire arrived.
To arrest a _ci-devant_ aristocrat like Ste. Luce was of course proper;
but the people were excited, and might do mischief, and they knew that
the Great Committee did not approve of riots.  France must have rest.
These outbreaks had ended elsewhere in the deaths of hundreds of
peasants.  He bade them wait, and, in fact, spoke with rare good sense.
He was roughly interrupted.  His speech was received with laughter and
contemptuous cries, and, to François’s amazement, there was Despard on
his feet, not twenty feet away.  His old partner was somber-looking and
red-eyed, but seemed to have lost his shyness of speech.  He broke out
into violent invectives, charging the previous speaker with indifference
to the good of France.  This man was no doubt a traitor. He had been in
the service of the _ci-devant_.  He had advised the people to wait.
Were they not the rulers? The Jacobin clubs would see to this rat of a
commissioner; let him come.  Then, leaping on a chair, he began to
contrast the luxury in which Ste. Luce lived with the meager life of the
peasant.  He talked of the great noble’s younger life, of his debauchery
and hardness.  All knew what he meant.  Not he alone had suffered.  How
many of the children men liked to call their own were of noble blood?

His fluent passion, his ease of speech, his apparent freedom from his
usual mood of fear, astonished François.  At last Despard became more
excited, raved wildly, grew incoherent, paused, burst into horrors of
blasphemous allusion, and, utterly exhausted, reeled, and dropped into
his chair, amid wild applauding cries and a dozen vain efforts of
speakers eager to be heard.  As if satisfied, the crowd waited no longer
to listen, and issued out in just the mood Despard had desired to
create.  François stepped aside, unnoticed.  Among the last, surrounded
by a gesticulating group, came Despard, silent, exhausted, his head bent
down.  A voice cried out: "To-night!  Let us do it to-night!"  Despard
said slowly: "No, not to-night.  He is not there—he is not there.
Perhaps to-morrow; we shall see.  I must have rest—rest."

"Is he mad?" thought François.  "_Diable_!  How he hates him!  Why is he
not afraid?"  He had once heard the choir-master tell of a feeble, timid
nun who had killed two people; and this man, he supposed, might be, like
her, crazed.  No matter; he must use him.  The crowd dispersed, and,
following Despard at a distance, François saw him enter the house of the
village priest, who had long since said his last prayer in the garden of
the Carmelites.

For an hour, and until all was still, François walked to and fro behind
the house.  Suddenly a door opened and closed.  François moved around
the house.  He saw Despard go out on the road.  After looking about him,
the Jacobin walked swiftly away, and was soon past the farthest houses.

"_Dame!_" said François, "let us go after him. What can he mean?  It
becomes amusing."  Moving with care in the shadows at the side of the
road, he followed Despard, who walked down the middle of the highway,
now and then stopping short and cracking his finger-joints, as he used
to do when worried, or clasping his hands over the back of his neck.

The thief smiled as he went.  He was again the savage of the streets,
with all his keen wits in play, and vaguely aware of pleasure in the use
of his training.  He looked about him, or stole noiselessly from one
depth of gloom to another across some less shadowed place.  He put out
with care one long leg and then the other tentatively, like great
feelers, and yet got over the ground with speed, as was required, for
Despard walked at a rate which was unusual.  The great ears of his
pursuer were on guard.  Once, when Despard stopped of a sudden, François
was near enough to hear him crack his knuckles as he pulled at them.  As
Pierre stood, he threw up a hand as it were in the eager gesture of a
speech, or in silent, custom-born attestation of some mentally recorded
vow. Then he went onward, silent, and was for a moment lost to view in
the aisles of the forest into which he turned.  François moved faster,
dimly seeing him again.  The Jacobin hurried on.  The man who followed
him was smiling in the darkness, and was feeding curiosity with the keen
satisfaction he felt in a chase which was not without a purpose.

Despard seemed to know the great forest well.  It soon became more open.
He came to a low garden wall, and, climbing it, was heard to tumble on
the farther side with a crash of breaking earthenware. He had come down
on a pile of garden pots.  The thief reflected for a moment that his
partner must have lost the agility of his former business, and himself
approached the wall with care.  Moving to one side, he dropped to the
ground, as quiet as a prowling cat.

There was no moon, but the night was clear, and over against the
star-lit space he saw the silhouette of a vast château—angles, gables,
turrets with vanes. The man whom he hunted moved across the garden,
through rose-hedges, under trees, as if reckless as to being heard.
Once he fell, but got up without even an exclamation; and so on and on
in stumbling haste until he stood upon the broad terrace in front of the
building.

François was for a little while at leisure to look about him.  Despard,
with a sudden movement, strode to the foot of the broad steps which led
up to the lofty doorway of the château.  Here again he stayed
motionless.  François, now used to the partial obscurity of the night,
took quick note of the white gleam of vases, of a fountain’s monotonous
murmur, of statues, dim gray blurs seen against the dark wood-spaces
beyond; the great size of the house he saw, and that three or four
windows showed lights within.

What was Despard about to do?  François waited. Then he heard now and
then, rising and falling, the faint notes of a violoncello.  At this
moment he saw that Pierre was gesticulating, and at last caught sound of
speech.  He was too far away to be clearly seen or distinctly heard.
François sat down, took off his shoes, tied them over his neck, and went
down on all fours.  It was one of his old tricks to amuse thus the
children gathered before the show-booth.  He could become a bear or an
elephant, and knew how to simulate the walk of beasts.  Now he
approached Despard on his hands and feet, and, seen in the partial
gloom, would have seemed a queer-looking animal. A closely clipped row
of box lay between them and bordered the broad roadway leading to the
portal.

His approach was noiseless.  Even if it had not been, it is unlikely
that Despard would have noticed it.  The quadruped knelt, and set his
eyes to see and his ears to hear, being now only six feet away.  His own
fate was deeply involved.  He cared little for the marquis, but up out
of the dark of memory came the tender sweetness of the face of the
widowed daughter. No word of her brief pleading was forgotten by this
man who craved regard, affection, respect, consideration—all that he had
not.  It was only a flash of thought, and again he was intently
receptive.

Despard stood, shaking his arms wildly, looking here and there, up and
down.  At last he spoke, and so loud that François watched him, amazed
at his unnatural lack of caution.

"To-morrow I, Pierre Despard, shall be master.  I shall no more be
afraid.  I shall see thee tremble on the tumbrel.  I shall see thee
shudder at the knife."

François had an uncontrollable shiver, predictive, sympathetic.  Could
he trust this creature?  There was no help for it.  He recalled with a
smile one of the Crab’s proverbs: "Monsieur Must is a man to trust."
She had many and vile sayings; this was one of the few that were not
swine-wisdom.

As the man went on speaking, his hands threatened the silent house or
snatched at some unseen thing. He stood again moveless for a moment, and
then threw out his hands as if in appeal, and called aloud: "Renée!
Renée! art thou here?  Oh, could he not have spared thee to me—to me,
who had so little? And he had so much!  Oh, for the name he should have
spared thee!  For the shame—the shame. Renée, his own child’s name.  My
Renée is dead, and his—his Renée lives; but not long—not long."

"_Dieu!_" murmured François.  "Let him have the man.  _Dame_!  I should
have killed him long ago."

Pierre was raving, and was only at times to be understood.  He seemed to
be seeing this lost Renée, and was now rational and again incoherent or
foolishly vague.

François hesitated; but at this moment a window on the second floor was
cast open, and a man, who may have heard Despard, showed himself.
François looked up, and saw a slight figure framed in the window-space
clear against the light behind him.

Despard cried out in tones of terror: "The marquis! the marquis!" and,
turning, fled down the terrace and along the avenue.

"Queer, that," muttered François.  "He is afraid. I must have him."  He
put on his shoes in haste, and with great strides pursued the retreating
figure, hearing, as he ran, the servant crying from the window, "Who
goes there?"

A hundred yards away from the house, Despard, terrified at the nearing
steps, turned into a side alley, and at last tore through a thicket to
the left.

In an instant François had him by the collar.  The captured man screamed
like a child in a panic of alarm, while François shook him as a terrier
shakes a rat.

"_Mille tonnerres!_ idiot, keep quiet!  Don’t kick; it is no use.  Thou
wilt have the whole house after thee. ’T is I—François.  Keep quiet!
Look at me—François. Dost not hear?"  At last he was quieted.

"What scared thee, _mon ami_?"

"I saw him—I saw the marquis!  I saw him!"

"Monsieur—the marquis?  He is thrice that fellow’s size."

They were now seated on the ground, Despard panting, and darting quick
glances to right and left like a frightened animal.

"Come, Pierre, tell me what all this means.  Art gone clean out of thy
wits?"

"Why dost thou ask?  Thou dost know well enough.  I have waited—waited.
Now I have him."

"_Dame_!  Thou?  Thou wilt never face him.  Thou art afraid."

"I am now.  I shall not be to-morrow night. There will be hundreds.  I
shall look!  I shall see!"

"For Heaven’s sake," cried François, "talk a little sense.  A man who
fears a mouse to talk of killing this terrible fellow!"

"The law will kill him, not I.  The law—the knife."

"Stuff!  A certain commissioner, Grégoire, is after thee, and, worse,
after me.  He hath a wart on his nose.  I ran away to avoid those cursed
Jacobins. Passport all right—name of Jean François.  Mind thee!  My
father is old and failing.  Thou wilt have to find me a papa.  Grégoire
has—he has doubts, this Grégoire.  So have I.  When I told him you were
my friend, he shut me up in a cellar, and that I liked not.  I was a
fool to run away; but, _mon Dieu!_ there was my errand—to see that poor
father—all set out on my passport, and the man with the wart
inquisitive. I had to get here and find my papa."

Another man’s difficulties took off Pierre’s mind from his own.  He was
clear enough now, and asked questions, some hard to answer, but all
reasonable.

François related his story.  The fencing-master had fallen under
suspicion and run away.  He, François, likewise suspected, had got a
passport from a Jacobin fencing-pupil, and come hither to fall on the
neck of his dear friend Pierre.  It was neat, and hung together well.
It had many omissions, and as a whole lacked the fundamental quality of
truth, but it answered. When a man’s head is set to save his head, it
may not always be desirable to be accurate.

Pierre reflected; then he cried out suddenly: "This Grégoire!  That for
him!  Let him take care.  Art thou still a Royalist?"

François was a Jacobin of the best, unjustly suspected.  He was eager to
know what deviltry was in Pierre’s mind as to this marquis; and there,
too, was the daughter.  If he meant to stir these peasants to riot in
order to gratify himself and his well-justified hatred, that might sadly
influence François’s fate. The central power in Paris was merciless to
lawless violence which did not aid its own purposes.

François talked on and on slackly, getting time to think.  Pierre’s
speech had troubled him.  He was puzzled as he saw more distinctly the
nature of the man whom he was forced to trust.  He did not analyze him.
He merely apprehended and distrusted one who was to-day a shrinking
coward and to-morrow a man to be feared less for what he might do than
for what he might lead others to do when himself remote from sources of
immediate physical fear.  François did not—could not—fully know that he
was now putting himself in the power of one who was the victim of
increasing attacks of melancholy, with intervals of excitement during
which the victim was eagerly homicidal, and possessed for a time the
recklessness and the cunning of the partly insane.

"Come," said François, at last; "you must hide me until you can find me
that papa, or until Citizen Grégoire has come and gone.  I like him
not."

"Nor I," said Pierre.  "But let him take care; I am not a man to be
played with."

François said he should think not, but that if he meditated an attack on
that miserable _ci-devant_ yonder, it were better to wait until Grégoire
had come and gone.

This caution seemed to awaken suspicion.  Pierre turned, and caught
François’s arm.  "Thou art a spy—a spy of the Convention!"

"Thou must be more fond of a joke than was once thy way.  Nonsense!  I
could go back and warn the marquis.  That would serve the republic, and
well, too; for, by Heaven! if thou art of a mind to burn houses,
Robespierre will shorten thee by a head in no time."

"Who talks of burning houses?  Am I a fool?  I—Despard?"

"No, indeed.  Thou—" François needed the man’s help, and felt that he
was risking his own safety.  He must at least seem to trust him.  "Dost
thou mean to arrest Ste. Luce?"

"I do."

"But when?"

"Oh, in a day or two; no hurry."

François knew that he was hearing a lie.  "Good," he said.  "But I
advise thee against violence."

"There will be none.  I control these people.  Thou shouldst see; thou
shouldst hear me speak."

"Let us go," said François, and they returned to the village without a
word on either side.  The hamlet was quiet.  At the priest’s door
François said: "Wait for me.  I must fetch my bundle and Toto.  I left
them in the wood."  Pierre would wait.  In an hour his ex-partner came
back, and before he could knock was admitted by the anxious Jacobin.

When they were within the house, he told François that he lived alone.
An old woman cooked for him, and came in the morning and went away at
dusk. He, François, should have the garret; and, this being settled,
they carried thither cold meats, bread, cheese, wine, and water, so as
to provision the thief for a few days.  There would be time to talk
later.  François asked a single question, saying frankly that he had
heard Pierre speak to his club.  Certainly he had power over the people.
What was it he had meant to do, and when?  Despard hesitated.  Then the
cunning of a crumbling mind came to his aid, and he replied lightly:

"We shall wait till Grégoire has gone.  I told thee so already.  Thy
advice was good.  I do not know. We shall see—we shall see."  The door
closed after him.  The man, descending the stair, paused of a sudden,
the prey of suspicion.  Why did François come hither?  Was he a spy of
the marquis—of the Convention?  He feared François.  To one in his state
of mind little obstacles seem large, great obstacles small.  He must
watch him.  He was in his power.

The man left within the room was not less suspicious. He hung a cover
over the single window, locked the door, and lay down, with Toto at his
feet, and at his side his rapier and pistols.  He slept a tranquil
sleep.  Most of the next day he sat at the window, watching through a
slit in the curtain the street below him.  People came and went; groups
gathered about the desecrated church; there was much excitement, but he
could hear nothing.  At dusk he saw a number of men, some with sticks
and pikes, come toward the priest’s house.  Owing to his position, he
lost sight of them as they came nearer, but from the noise below he
presumed them to have entered.  He was, for many reasons, indisposed to
remain uninformed. He waited.  The noise increased.  Pierre had not come
to visit him, as he had said he would; and where was that much-desired
father?  He laughed.  "Ah, Toto, one must needs be his own papa."  He
had gone about all day in his stocking-feet to avoid being overheard.
Now he bade Toto be quiet, and, opening the door, went cautiously down
the stone stairway.  It was quite dark.  On the last landing he stood,
intently listening.  The hallway below was full of men, and evidently
the two rooms on the ground floor were as crowded.  He overheard
Despard’s voice, angry and strenuous.  The words he could not catch, but
the comments of those in the wide hall were enough.  The commissioner
was coming, and would interfere. Despard was right.  The marquis was
about to fly, to emigrate.  He must be arrested.  They poured out,
shouting, tumultuous, to join the excited mob in the street.

François went quickly up the stair.  He cared little for the marquis,
but he cared much for the pale lady whose face was stamped in his
memory.  Moreover, all this ruin and threatened bloodshed were not to
his mind.  A day’s reflection had enabled him to conclude that, between
Grégoire and Despard, the situation was perilous, and that he had better
disappear from the scene.  Meanwhile he would warn the marquis, and then
go his way.

He put on his shoes, took his bundle, his arms, and Toto, and, with his
cloak on his shoulder, slipped quietly down-stairs.  The house was
empty.  He went out the back way unseen, observing that the church was
lighted, and seeing a confused mass of noisy peasants about the door.

                                 *XVI*

_How François warns the Marquis de Ste. Luce, and of the battle on the
staircase between the old day and the new._

It was now close to nine, and again a bright, cold, starry night.  A
long circuit brought him to the highroad.  A mile away he struck into a
broad avenue, and, never pausing, pushed on.  His sense of locality was
acute and like that of an animal. Once or twice he was sure that he
heard dull noises behind him when the sharp night wind blew from the
village.’

"Ah, Toto," he murmured, "keep thou close to heel. This is our greatest
adventure.  I would we were out of it.  Ah, the château!"  He ran across
the flowerbeds, and with long leaps up the steps, and sounded a strong
summons on the knocker of the great door. A servant opened it.  "Where
is the marquis?"  What the man said he did not wait to hear.  The lofty
hall was dark, but the principal staircase was lighted faintly from
above.  Without a word, François hurried past the servant and up the
stairs.  From the broad landing he saw beyond him a lighted
drawing-room, and heard the notes of a violoncello.  There was the
woman, pale and beautiful, in black, her face upturned, the boy holding
before her a sheet of music. The human richness of the cello’s tones
sounded through the great chamber.  Where had he seen the like?  Ah,
that picture in the vestry of Notre Dame—the face of St. Cecilia!  He
had a moment of intense joy at having come.  Till then he had doubted if
it were wise.  As he stood, the marquis came toward him quickly from the
side of the room, and two gentlemen left a card-table and started up.

François went in at once, meeting the marquis within the room.  The
music ceased; the woman cried, "_Mon Dieu!_"  Every one stared at this
strange figure.

"What is it, my man?  _Venire St. Gris!_ ’t is my thief!  This way," and
he led him aside into a little room, while the rest, silent and
troubled, looked after them.

"Monsieur, to waste no words, these cursed peasants are on their way to
do here what mischief the devil knows.  It is you they want.  There is a
fool, one Despard, who leads them.  But, _Dieu!_ there is small time to
think."

François, breathless, panting, stood looking about him, now as always
observant, and curious as to this wonderful room and this impassive
gentleman.  Toto, as well blown as his master, recognizing the value of
a soft rug, dropped, head on legs, meaning to have at least the minute’s
luxury and rest.

The marquis stood still in thought a moment.  "I am greatly obliged to
you; and this is twice—twice. I expected trouble, but not so soon.  Come
this way."

François followed.  Toto kept one eye on him, and slept with the other.
As they reëntered the great salon, the two gentlemen and Mme. Renée, all
visibly agitated, came to meet them.  "What is it?" they asked.  The
marquis forestalled further inquiry.

"My daughter, our kindly peasants will be here in an hour—no, half an
hour, or less.  Resistance is useless.  To fly is to confess the need to
fly; it is not to my taste.  You gentlemen are better out of this.  Go
at once—at once!"

"Yes, go!" said madame.  "You cannot help us, and can only make bad
worse."

They wasted no time, and few words passed.  The little drama played
itself quickly.

"Adieu, madame!" Madame courtesied.  The boy walked over and stood by
his grandfather.  He looked up at his clear-cut face, with its cold
smile, and then at the backs of the retiring gentlemen.  He had a boy’s
sense of these being deserters.  They were gone in hot haste.

Mme. Renée came nearer.  "We thank you—I thank you"; and she put out her
hand.  François took it awkwardly.  A touch of the hand of this
high-bred, saintly lady, _grande dame_ and true woman, singularly
disturbed the man.  The tremor of a strange emotion ran over him.  He
let fall the soft hand, and drew himself up to the full of his unusual
height, saying: "It is little—very little."

"And now you must go," she said; "and at once."

"Of course—of course," said Ste. Luce.  "Out the back way.  Victor will
show you."  There were no further thanks.  All such common men had
served the great noble; it seemed of the nature of things. But the woman
said:

"God protect you!  God will know to thank you. I cannot fitly.  Go—go!"

"I do not mean to go," said François.  "Hark! it is too late."  He knew
not then, or ever, why he stayed. The boy looked up at him.  Here was
another kind of man, and not a gentleman, either.  Why did he not go?

An old majordomo came with uncertain steps of nervous haste, crying:
"The servants are gone, monsieur!  The people are coming up the avenue!
_Mon Dieu!_"

"Indeed!  Now be off with you, Master Thief."

"No."  His head said, "Go"; his heart said, "Stay."

"By St. Denis, but you are a fool!"

François muttered that he had been that always, and then felt the hand
of the boy touch his own.  He called: "Toto!  Toto!  We will stay."  And
the dog, at ease in all society, selected a yet softer rug.

The marquis troubled himself no further as to François. He went out of
the room, and was back in a minute, while the uproar increased, and Mme.
Renée, at the window, pleaded with the thief, urging him to fly, or
cried: "They are coming!  Oh, a crowd—a mob—with torches and arms!  The
saints protect us!  Why will you not go?  Oh, _mon père_—father! thou
hast thy rapier.  What canst thou against hundreds—hundreds?"

The marquis smiled.  "_Costume de rigueur_, my dear. There will be no
bloodshed, my child."

"And they will all run," cried the boy.  "And if grandpapa has to
surrender, he must give up his sword.  When my papa was taken in
America, he had to—"

"Hush!" said the mother.  The lad was singularly outside of the tragic
shadows of the hour.

François all this while stood near the window, his cloak cast back, his
queer, smile-lit face intent now on the mob without, now on the woman,
the boy, the man.  "_Dame!_" he muttered.  "We are in dangerously high
society."  He set his knapsack aside, cast off his cloak, loosened his
rapier in its sheath, looked to the priming of his pistols, and waited
to see what would happen when this yelling thing out yonder should burst
into action.

"They must have made mad haste, madame."

"They are on the terrace.  Mother of Heaven!" cried the woman.  "They
wait!  A man is speaking to them.  They have torches.  Some go—some go
to right around the house."  A stone splintered the window-glass, and
she fell back.  "Wretches!"

The marquis turned to her.  "Stay here.  I go to receive our guests."

"No, no!"

"Do as I tell thee.  Be still."  She caught the boy to her, and fell
into a chair, sobbing.  The marquis called to the quaking majordomo:
"Take those two candelabra.  Set them at the foot of the staircase—the
foot."  The old servant obeyed without words. The marquis went by him.
He seemed to have forgotten François, who glanced at Mme. Renée and
followed the master of the house.

There had been a moment’s lull outside.  The double stairway swept down
to a landing, and then in one noble descent to the great deserted hall,
where the faded portraits of lord and lady looked down among armor and
trophies of war and chase.

"Put those lights there—and there.  Get two more—quick!  Set them on the
brackets below.  One must see.  Put out the lights in the drawing-room.
What, you here yet, Master Thief?  What the devil are you doing here?
The deuce!"  As he spoke they were standing together on the broad
landing, before them the great stair which led down to the illuminated
hall below.  The marquis had meant to meet these people outside; he was
quiet, cool, the master of many resources.  Surprised at the suddenness
of the outbreak, he still counted, with the courage of habit, on his
personal influence and address.  As the marquis spoke, the roar without
broke forth anew.  A shower of stones clattered on door and wall and
window with sharp crash and tinkle of breaking glass.  It was followed
by an indescribable tumult—shouts, laughter, the shrill voices of women,
a multitudinous appeal to fear, ominous, such as no man could hear
unmoved. The animal we call a mob was there—the thing of moods, like a
madman, now destructive, now as a brute brave, now timid as a house-fly.

They beat on the great doors, and of a sudden seemed to discover that
the servants, in flying, had not secured them.  The doors gave way, and
those in front were hurled into the hall by the pressure of those
behind.  In an instant it was half full of peasants armed with all
manner of rude weapons.  A dozen had torches of sheep’s wool wrapped
about pitchforks and soaked with tar.  Their red flames flared up, with
columns above of thick smoke.  There were women, lads.  None had
muskets.  Some looked about them, curious.  Those without shouted and
pressed to get in; but this was no longer easy.  A few of the boldest
began to move up the lower steps of the great staircase.  At the landing
above, in partial obscurity, stood the marquis and François.  On the
next rise behind them were Mme. Renée and her boy, unnoticed, unwilling
to be left alone.  The stairway and all above it were darker than the
red-lighted hall, where ravage was imminent.  A man struck with a
butcher’s mallet a suit of armor.  It rang with the blow, and fell with
clang and rattle, hurting a boy, who screamed.  The butcher leaped on
the pedestal and yelled, waving one of the iron gauntlets. They who
hesitated, leaderless, at the foot of the dark ascent turned at the
sound of the tumbled past.

The marquis cried aloud, "Halt, there!"

Some mischievous lad outside cast a club at the side window of the hall,
and the quartered arms of Ste. Luce, De Rohan, and their kin fell with
sharp, jangling notes on the floor and on the heads of the crowd.

"Halt, I say!"  The voice rang out of the gloom, strong and commanding.
The marquis’s sword was out.  "Draw, my charming thief.  _Morituri te
salutant_!"

"What?" cried François—"what is that?"

"Nothing.  We are about to die; that is all.  Let us send some couriers
to Hades.  You should have gone away.  Now you are about to die."

François drew his long rapier.  He was strangely elated.  "We are going
to die, Toto."  The dog barked furiously.  "Keep back!" cried his
master. Then he heard Pierre Despard’s shrill voice cry out: "Surrender,
Citizen Ste. Luce, or it will be worse for thee."  The mob screamed:
"Despard!  Despard!"  He was hustled forward, amid renewed shouts,
cries, crash of falling vases, and jangling clatter of broken glass.
The reluctant leader tried to keep near to the door.  The mob was of
other mind.  He was thrust through the press to the foot of the stair,
with cries of "Vive Despard!  Vive Despard!"  The people on the stair,
fearing no resistance, were pushed up, shouting, "_À bas les émigrés!_"

"Now, then!" cried the marquis.  "Get back there, dogs!" The two blades
shot out.  A man fell; another, touched in the shoulder, screamed, and
leaped over the balustrade; the rest fell away, one man on another, with
shrieks and groans.  François caught a lad climbing on the outside of
the gilded rail, and, with a laugh, threw him on the heads of those
below. A joy unknown before possessed the thief—the lust of battle, the
sense of competency.  He took in the whole scene, heart, mind, and body
alive as never before.

"_Sang de St. Denis_!  You are a gallant man.  But we are lost.  They
will be on our backs in a moment; I hear them."  Amid a terrible din,
stones and sticks flew.  A pebble struck the marquis in the face.
"_Dame!_" he cried, furious, and darted down a step or two, the quick
rapier mercilessly stabbing here and there.  One madder than the rest
set a torch to a priceless tapestry.  It flared up, lighting the great
space and the stair, and doing in the end no harm. Despard, terrified,
was pushed forward to the edge of the fallen bodies on the staircase.

"Surrender!" he called out in a shriek of fear, for here before him were
the two men he most dreaded on earth.  The noise was indescribable.  The
butcher beat with the iron gauntlet on a shield beside him; then he
threw the steel glove at François.  It flew high.  There was a cry from
the space behind.  The little boy screamed shrilly, "They have killed my
mama!"

François looked behind him.  There was now light enough, and too much.
He saw the woman lying, a convulsed, tumbled heap, on the stair.  The
marquis glanced behind him, and lost his cool quietude.  He ran down the
stair, stabbing furiously.  A half-dozen dead and wounded lay before
him.  In an instant he was back again beside François, his face bleeding
from the stones and sticks thrown at him.  François was standing, tall
and terrible in his anger, a pistol in his hand.

"Shall I kill him, monsieur?"

"By Heaven, yes!"

The pistol resounded terribly in the vaulted space, and the brute who
had thrown the gauntlet, swaying, screamed shrilly, and tumbled—dead.

"Give me your hand!" cried the marquis.  "Thank you, monsieur; the devil
hath a recruit.  Now follow me.  Let us kill and die.  To hell with this
rabble!"

"Wait," cried François, and, running down the steps, put out a long arm
and caught Despard.  He hauled him savagely after him, calling out,
"Hold the stair a moment!"  In an instant he was on the landing above,
with his prey.  His sword he let fall, and set a pistol to Despard’s
head.  The terror of the trapped Jacobin was pitiful.  He prayed for
life.  He would let them all go; he would—he would.  François swung him
round to face the suddenly silenced mob.  "Keep still, or I will scatter
your brains, fool! Tell them to go!  Tell them to go, or, _sang de
Dieu!_ thou art a dead man!"

Pierre screamed out his orders: "Go—go—all of you.  I order—go!"

The beast he had trained and led was of no such mind.  A man called out,
"Die like a man, coward!"  A stone or two flew.  One struck him.  The
storm broke out anew.

"Say thy prayers.  Thou art dead.  Shall I kill him, monsieur?"

"No, no; not that man—not him!"

"Mercy!" screamed Despard.

"The deuce!" laughed François.  "It gets warm, monsieur.  What to do
with this coward?  Keep still, insect!"

The mob had for a little time enough of these terrible swordsmen on the
stair.  It was awed, helpless. Below lay, head down or athwart, three
dead men, and certain wounded, unable to crawl.  The mob shrank away,
and, with eyes red in the glare, swayed to and fro, indecisive,
swearing.  For a moment no more missiles were thrown.  They awaited the
expected attack from the rear of the house.

Pierre hung, a limp, inert thing, one arm on the balustrade, the thief’s
strong clutch on his neck, making his shivering bulk a shield against
stick and stone.

"It will soon be over," said the marquis, quietly. "There!  I thought
so."

A dull roar was heard, and the crash of broken glass from somewhere
behind them.

This signal set loose the cowed mob.  Clubs and stones flew.  Something
struck Pierre.  He squealed like a hurt animal, pain and terror in the
childlike cry. More men crowded in, and the mass, with shout and cry,
surged forward, breaking mirrors and vases, with frantic joy in the
clatter of destruction.

"It is serious this time," cried the marquis.  "Adieu, my brave fellow."
Another tapestry flared up, slowly burning.  "Let us take toll,
François.  Come!"

"Good, monsieur!  But my fool here—"

At this moment the crowd at the door divided.  A dozen soldiers broke
in, and with them the man of the wart—Grégoire.

"_Dame!_" cried François; "the Commissioner Grégoire!  The wart!  It is
time to leave."

"Order, here," shouted Grégoire, "in the name of the law!"  The guard
pushed in and made a lane. One or two persistent rioters were collared
and passed out.  A dead silence fell on all.  The shreds of the tapestry
dropped.  The mob fell back.

"Help! help!" cried Pierre.

"_Morbleu!_ dost thou want to die?"

"It is over," said the marquis.  "I prefer my peasants."

Grégoire called out, "Where is the mayor?"  A reluctant little man
appeared.

"Commissioner, these men have slain citizens," he said.

"And they did well.  France wants order.  Out with you all, or I shall
fire on you.  Citizens indeed! See to that stuff burning."

The peasants, awed, slunk away.  Grégoire coolly mounted the stairs.

"Hold!" cried the marquis.

"I arrest thee in the name of the law!  Here is my order."

The marquis took it.

"The light is bad," he said; "but I see it is in good form.  The law I
obey—and muskets"; and then, in a half-whisper to François: "Run! run!
I will hold the stairs."

Grégoire overheard him.

"The citizen _émigré_! I arrest him!" and he went up a step.

"Back!" cried the marquis, lunging fiercely at the too adventurous
commissioner, who leaped down the stairway with the agility of alarm.

"Fire!" he cried.

"Thanks, monsieur; I can help you no more!" cried François.  As he
spoke, he hurled the unhappy Despard on top of the commissioner.  They
fell in a heap.  The thief, catching up his rapier, was off and away
through the drawing-room, seeing, as he went, the woman lying on the
floor, her forehead streaming blood.  He picked up his cloak and
knapsack, and, followed by Toto, ran for his life down a long corridor
to the left.  At the end, he threw open a window, and dropped, with the
dog under his arm, upon the roof of a portico over a side door.  No one
was near. He called the dog, and fled through the gardens and into the
woods of the chase.

                                 *XVII*

_Of how François, escaping, lives in the wood; of how he sees the
daughter of the marquis dying, and knows not then, or ever after, what
it was that hurt him; of how he becomes homesick for Paris._

The forest was of great extent, and intersected by wood roads.  Along
one of these François ran for an hour or more, until he was tired, and
had put, as he believed, some miles between himself and the citizen with
the wart.  The way became more narrow, the forest more dense.  At last
there was only a broad path.  Now and then he saw the north star, and
knew that he was traveling southward.  He came out at dawn on an open
space, rocky and barren, a great rabbit-warren, as he knew by the sudden
stampede of numberless rabbits.  He turned aside into the woods, and a
few hundred yards away found a bit of marsh, and beyond it a brook, with
leaf-covered space beneath tall plane-trees, now bare of foliage. He
drank deep of the welcome water, and sat down with Toto to rest and
think.

"_Mon ami_," he said, "we like adventures; but this was a little too
much."  Then he laughed at the thought of Pierre’s terror; but the man
with the wart was not so funny, and the poor lady who was St. Cecilia,
and that cold-blooded devil of a marquis—"What a man!"

Here were rabbits for food, and only a forest bed, but, on the whole,
better than the Conciergerie or the Châtelet.  He slept long, and was
cold, fearing to make a fire.  About eleven next morning he left Toto,
and went with care to the edge of the wood.  He heard noises, and saw
boys setting traps; for now my lord’s rabbits were anybody’s rabbits.
The traps pleased him.  He slipped away.  At evening, being dreadfully
hungry, he went to the warren, took two rabbits out of the traps, and
went back.  The man’s patience was amazing: not until late at night did
he make a fire to cook his meat; but Toto, less exacting, was fed at
once with the raw flesh.

A week went by, with no more of incident than I have mentioned.  He
explored the woods day after day, and a half-mile away found a farm,
whence at night he took toll of milk, having stolen a pail to aid him.
It was all sadly monotonous, but what else could he do?  Once, after a
fortnight, he was bold enough to wander in daylight within the woods
near the château.  It was apparently deserted; at least, he saw no signs
of habitation; nor, later at night, when he went back, were there
lights, except in one room on the ground floor.

Francis approached with caution, and, looking through a window, saw an
old man seated by the fire. Making sure that he was alone, the wanderer
tapped on the pane.  The man at the hearthside looked up, and François
saw, as he had suspected, that he was the majordomo.  Again François
tapped, and observing the inmate move toward the door, he hurried
thither. As they met, François hastened to say that he was the man who
aided the marquis, having himself had the luck to escape.  Once
reassured, the old majordomo urged François to enter.  But this he would
not do. He had had enough of house-traps.  In the forest they would be
secure.  To this the servant agreed, and followed him at once.  When at
last in the woodland shelter, François asked: "What of the marquis?"  He
had been taken by Grégoire toward Paris, but was said to have made his
escape.  "A hard man to hold is my master; and as to the village, it has
had to pay right dearly, too."  Pierre had been arrested, but was soon
set free.  And the little gentleman? He had been taken to a cousin’s
house in eastern Normandy.  François hesitated over his final question;
he himself could not have told why.

[Illustration: "THE WANDERER TAPPED ON THE PANE."]

"And Mme. Renée?" he exclaimed, and bent forward, intent.

"The countess?"

"I did not know.  Is she a countess?  Mme. Renée—what of her?—she who
was hurt.  I passed her; she lay on the upper stair.  There was
blood—blood. The little boy cried to me to help her.  My God!  I could
not.  I—tell me, was she badly hurt?"

"She is dying, monsieur.  Something—a gauntlet, they say—struck her
head.  She has known no one since."

"Where is she?"

"In the château, with a maid and her aunt.  She was too ill to be taken
away.  She is dying to-night. They say she cannot last long.  God rest
her soul! ’T is the end of everything."

The thief stood still a minute; then he said resolutely, "I must see
her."  This the old servant declared impossible; but when François swore
that he would go alone, he finally consented to show him the way,
insisting all the time that he would not be let in.

In a few minutes they were moving down a long corridor on the second
floor.  All was dark until the majordomo paused at a door under which a
line of light was to be seen.  Here he knocked, motioning his companion
to keep back a little.  The door opened, and a gaunt middle-aged lady
came forth.

"What is it?" she said.

"This man—this gentleman would see the countess."

"What do you want?" she said, facing François. "My niece is
dying—murdered.  You have done your cruel work.  Would you trouble the
dead?"

"Madame," said François, "I am he who held the stair with the marquis.
I am no Jacobin.  I shot the man who wounded the countess."

"You!  He is dead."

"Thank God!  May I see the lady?"

"She is dying; why should you see her?"

"Madame, I am a poor unhappy thief.  Once this lady offered me help—a
chance, a better life.  I was a fool; I let it go by.  I—let me see
her."

"Come in," said the gentlewoman; and, with no more words, he entered
after her, and approached the bed, leaving his dog outside.  What he
beheld he neither forgot nor, I believe, save in his memoirs, ever spoke
of to any one.

He saw a white face on the pillow; a deep-red spot on each cheek; eyes
with the glaze of swift-coming death.  He fell on his knees beside her,
and stayed motionless, watching the sweat on the brow, the breath
quicken and then stop as if it would not come again. At last he touched
the hand.  It was cold, and he withdrew his own hand, shrinking back.
He had seen death, but no death like this.  He said, "Madame."  There
was no answer.  He looked up at the older woman.  "She is dying; she
does not hear."

[Illustration: "HE SAW A WHITE FACE ON THE PILLOW."]

"No; nor ever will in this world."

He turned, bent down, and kissed the fringe of the coverlet.  Then he
arose, shaken by the strongest emotion life had brought to him.

"I thank you," he said, and moved to the door. He paused outside.

"Are you sure the beast is dead—the man who did that—that?"

"Yes."

"I am sorry—sorry."  He shook his long arms in the air.  "I should like
now to kill him again—again!"  He walked swiftly away, and, not waiting
for the servant, left the house and found his way back to his forest
shelter.

All night long he sat without a fire, indifferent to poor Toto’s efforts
to get a little notice, not feeling the cold, a sorely wounded man, with
a scar on his memory which no after happiness could ever erase.

The next night he found the majordomo, and learned that the countess was
dead.  He took away blankets and the provisions bountifully supplied,
and once more rejoined his dog.

In this manner the last days of February were passed; and in March the
spring began to appear, but with it a new peril.  The woodmen went here
and there at work, and thrice he narrowly escaped being seen.  Early in
April his friend the majordomo disappeared, and the great château was
infested with men who came and went—for what he knew not.

He began to be troubled with a feverish desire to see the streets of
Paris.  At last he made up his mind to leave his forest shelter; and
sometime in April, having hesitated long, he set out.  He hid all day in
woods, and walked at night, until he reached the Seine.  With this as a
guide, he went on, robbing hen-houses of eggs, and milking cows, until
he was close to Paris.  How to enter it he did not know. The times were
doubly dangerous.  Spies and suspicion were everywhere to be dreaded.
His papers had no certifications from the places he was presumed to have
visited.  Formidable in the background he saw the man Grégoire, the
commissioner with the wart of ill luck.

How the thief and his dog lived near to Paris in woods and fields, there
is no need to tell in detail. The month of June was come in this year of
1793. Marat was ill, and Charlotte Corday on her way to forestall the
decree of nature.  La Vendée was up. The Girondists had fallen, the
great cities of the South were in uproar, the enemy was on the frontier,
and the rule of France in the competent and remorseless hands of the
Committee of Public Safety.  All around Paris the country was infested
with wandering people who, for the most part, like François, had good
reason to fear.  There were beggars, thieves, persecuted nobles, those
who had no mind to face the foe as volunteers.  Now and then François,
ever cautious, picked up a little news on a scrap of gazette found by
the wayside.  He read that Citizen Amar was of the Great Committee of
General Security.  François laughed.

"Toto, dost thou think this will add to thy master’s security?  That was
the gentleman with the emigrative mouth.  _Ami_, he is still alive.
They must be tough, these Jacobins.  What fun, Toto!  I can see him
pinned to the door like a beetle, and that marquis with a face, Toto,
like a white plaster cast those Italians used to sell.

"I like not M. Amar.  Toto, we are unhappy in our acquaintances.  But
the man of the wart is the worst."  This was François’s black beast;
why, he could not have said.  Amar, _le farouche_, was really a more
fatal foe.  The citizen who dressed neatly, and wore spectacles over
green eyes, and was in debt to the conjurer for a not desirable forecast
of fortune, was a yet more sinister acquaintance.  Yet it was Citizen
Grégoire who came to François in dreams, and the bare thought of whom
could chop short a laugh as surely as Mother Guillotine, the merciless.

                                *XVIII*

_Wherein is told how François reënters Paris, and lodges with the Crab;
and of how Toto is near to death by the guillotine.  François meets
Despard and the marquis, who warns him and is warned._

A few days later, when lying behind a deserted hut at dusk, François
heard a noise of military music, and ventured forth on the road leading
to the barrier. Many hundreds of the wounded from the frontier were
passing, in wagons or on foot.  The communes and clubs were out to meet
them.  The cabarets outside of the gate poured forth a noisy company.
The road was full.  Who should stop the free citizens or the ladies of
the fish-market, come to welcome patriot volunteers?  Here was an escort
of troops, wild, triumphant greeting of captured Austrian flags, many
wounded in wagons, many more afoot, marching wearily.  Those who walked
the people must aid.  The ranks were soon broken, and all was
good-natured tumult.  Here was help for heroes—wine, bread, eager aid of
an arm.  Some who were dragging along on crutches, to get a little
relief from jolting wagons, were hoisted, to their discomfort, on the
shoulders of friendly patriots not eager to volunteer.

François, tucking Toto under his cloak, edged himself into the broken
ranks of the heroes of Hondschoote and Wattignies.  "We are many," he
said to a man beside him, as tattered as he, for there was scarcely a
rag of uniform.  "Jolly to get home again!"

"_Sacré!_ not if they guillotined thy father a week ago."

"_Dame!_ is that so?  But patience, and hold thy tongue, citizen.
_Tonnerre!_ my leg."  He was limping.

"Thy shoulder, friend"—to a blouse.  "_Tiens!_ that is better.  The
Austrian bullets have a liking for one’s bones.  Crack! crack!  I can
hear them yet.  They do not spare the officers any more than they do the
privates."

Should they carry the citizen officer—take care of his sword?  François
thanked them; the citizens must be careful of his leg; and there was
François on the shoulders of two big Jacobins, like a dozen more; for it
was who should help, and a shouting, good-humored crowd.  François was
not altogether well pleased at his elevation; he dropped forward his too
well-known face.  There was a jam at the barrier.  Had these citizen
soldiers their passes, as provided?  François was weak; he suffered,
poor fellow!  The Jacobins and the women roared derisively: "Passes for
heroes?"  All order was lost.  They were through, and in the Rue
d’Enfer.  Would the good citizens let him walk? He was heavy, and they
were pleased to be relieved of one hundred and ninety-five pounds of
wounded hero.

Meanwhile there was some renewed order in the broken formation; yet now
and then men fell out to meet sweethearts or friends, usually coming
back again to the ranks.  The hint was good.

"_Ciel!_ comrade, there is my mother!"  The crowd gave way as the hero
hobbled out of the line.  He called out: "_Mère, mère_—mother!  Here!
’T is I—Adolphe.  The deuce! she is so deaf."

Where was she?  Citizens were eager to help him.

"Ah," he cried, "she saw me not"; and, turning into a side street near
the asylum, limped painfully in pursuit of the mother who was afflicted
with deafness. Toto followed.  Once around a corner, the lameness
disappeared.  In the gathering dusk he set out for the Cité.

"It must be Quatre Pattes, Toto.  Come along.  A bad year, my friend, to
have lost a father and a mother.  No matter; we are in Paris."

He loved the streets.  "Ah, there is Notre Dame and the river!"  He was
happy, and went along laughing, and at last turned into a small café
near to his old home in the Rue des Chanteurs.

He was tired and hungry, and, as he agreeably remembered, well off,
having had small chance to spend the money with which he had been
generously provided by Achille Gamel.  The bread and cheese were good,
and the wine was not bad.  He asked for tobacco and a pipe.  Would the
host find him "L’Ami du Peuple"?  He was a sublieutenant, wounded on the
frontier; but, _dame!_ to get home was happiness.

Two men sat down by him, and talked.  Good Jacobins were these, in the
dirty uniforms of the sansculotte army which kept Paris in order at the
rate of forty sous a day.  "Bad wages, citizen lieutenant," they said.

The hero of the frontier was worse off—no pay for three months.  He
related his battles; and now he must go.

"Come, Toto."  Toto had been wounded at Wattignies; he was well now, and
would be promoted. "_Bon soir_, comrades."  In fact, he was wildly gay,
glad to be back in Paris.

He paused, at last, before a house of the date of Henri II.  Its heavy,
narrow door, and a slit in the wall for a window, told of days when
every man’s house was a fortress.

"It is our best chance, Toto; but best may be bad. We must do
something."  He jingled the bell.  The cord was drawn by the concierge
within, so as to lift the latch, and François entered the hall.  To
right was the Crab’s den, and there within was Quatre Pattes.  He saw
the thin purple nose, the bleared red eyes, the bearded chin, and the
two sticks.

"_Mille tonnerres!_ my child, it is thou.  And where hast thou been?
There is no thief like thee.  Come and laugh for thy old mother."  She
welcomed him in thieves’ slang, vile, profuse, and emphatic.  Had he any
money?  Yes, a little; business was good in the provinces; and would she
house him?  Here was a louis d’or for _maman_; and what was this
abominable _carte de sûreté_, this new trap?  She explained.  He need
have no fear; she would get him one.  He had been in bad company, she
had heard; for a Jacobin had told her of the fencing-school, and
thither, too late, she had gone to get a little help.  He had nearly
killed Amar, _le farouche_, and that injured citizen was said to desire
his society.  But that was long ago; and Paris lived fast, and was gay,
and forgot easily.

François had no wish to refresh Citizen Amar’s memory.  He asked lightly
if she had ever seen Grégoire, the commissioner to Normandy?

Mme. Quatre Pattes had never seen him.  He was of the Great Committee—a
patriot of the best, like herself.  Did he know Grégoire?  He told her
frankly that he had been arrested by Grégoire, and had escaped.

"Thou art the first, my child!" she cried, her jaws champing as if she
were eating.  "Thou hast a fine taste in the choosing of enemies.  I
would not be in thy skin for a hundred louis; and now a cat of the night
thou must be.  I can hide thee awhile; and if thou dost feed me well,
the mama-crab will care for thee.  No one need know thou art here.
Come, get thee a few louis, and we will buy a fine card of safety, and
christen thee to suit.  Ha, ha! my little one!" and she beat with her
sticks on the floor.

[Illustration: QUATRE PATTES.]

Our thief was now back in his garret, having lost as many fair chances
of prosperity as did Murad the Unlucky.  He reflected much in these late
autumn months of 1793, being for his wants rich, and therefore in no
necessity to give a thought to methods of getting his daily diet.
During the daytime Quatre Pattes insisted on his secluding himself in
his garret.  At night he left Toto with the Crab, who fed him well, and
was therefore liked by a revolutionary dog without prejudices.  From
these night prowls François returned with sad complaints of the way the
republicans guarded their slim purses; in fact, at this time he avoided