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.

"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."

"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.

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 adventures, stole from no one, and gave of his lessening store what barely contented Mme. Quatre Pattes. Were I to say that his goodness came from newly acquired views of life, I should mislead. He was as honest as ever, which is to say he took no thought at all as to ethical questions. We are said to be children of circumstance, which may be described as the environment of the hour. This is true of the feeble; but character was the more despotic parent in this resolute man, who could wrestle strenuously with circumstance. He was a Royalist because he liked show and color and the fine manners of the great; in the past he stole because he knew no other way to live. His admirable health was a contribution to his natural cheerfulness. He still had simple likings—for the country, for animals, and would have had for books had they been easy to get, or had he known how to get those which would have fed his mind and had sauce of interest.

His surroundings would have surely and hopelessly degraded a less permanent character, and a nature without his ingrained gaiety would have taken more steadily some thought of the far future. He knew too well how the thief's life ended: the galleys, the wheel, the lonely death-bed in the hospital. If he reflected on it at all, as he seems to have done at this time, it was because of his long, weary days in the attic. The immediate future at this period did disturb him, but never long. He liked to talk, and, lacking society, talked more and more to himself aloud, with Toto for an audience which never ceased to attend. He who is pleased with his own talk cannot easily be bored; and so he talked, until Quatre Pattes, who loved keyholes and to listen, thought he must be out of his head. She herself was always either silent or boisterous, and was as to this like other beasts of prey. When in calamity François was too busy to be serious. When at ease the mirthfulness of his natural man forbade argument as to what the dice-box of to-morrow would offer; for to laugh is to hope, and François, as we know, laughed much, well, and often.

There were many times in his life when to have been honestly loved by a woman capable of comprehending both his strength and his weakness would, I think, have given him the chance to live a better life. But how was this possible to one who lived as he lived—who was what he was?

To be merely liked was pleasant to François, and appealed with the most subtle form of flattery to his immense self-esteem. The man was sensitive, and in after days, when in an atmosphere of refinement, would never speak of the terrible women he had known too well in the Cité. Having no longer the distraction of the streets, he was at present condemned to live long hours with no society but that of Toto and the animal Quatre Pattes. He bought a small field-glass, and studied the habits of his neighbors far and near, and once more took interest in the feline owners of the roof-tops. Quatre Pattes fed him well, and brought him some of the old gazettes.

He read how, on that frightful 5th of September, now past, one of the five complementary days of the republican calendar, on motion of Barrere, "Terror" was decreed by the Convention to be the order of the day. It was indeed the birth-hour of the Terror. The Great Committee was in power. The revolutionary tribunals were multiplied. The law of suspected persons was drawn with care by the great jurist Merlin of Douai. Behind these many man-traps was the Committee of Public Safety, with despotic power over the persons of all men, and in full control of the prisons. To it the subcommittees reported arrests; it secured the prisoners who were to be tried; it saw to the carrying out of all sentences; it kept the peace in Paris with an array of sansculottes, and fed the guillotine daily. Of this stern mechanism, strong of head and incapable of pity, was Pierre André Amar; as, one day, François read with his full share of the Terror. There was soon enough of it to supply all France.

Before November came, François, pretending to have been in luck, supplied the Crab with six louis. She exacted two more, and how much she kept none may know. He had very few left.

She was as good as her word. "Here, my little one, is the carte de sûreté from the committee of this section." The description was taken from his passport. He was no more to be François, but François Beau. If he would denounce one or two people, the committee would indorse his card as that of "a good patriot who deserved well of the country." There was the lame cobbler over the way, who talked loosely, and to whom the Crab owed money; that would be useful and convenient. François shivered all down his long back; he would see. Meanwhile, as he considered, Quatre Pattes twisted her bent spine, rattled her two sticks, and looked up at him sidewise with evil eyes, bidding him have a care, and not get his good mama into trouble, or else, or else—François felt that some night he might have to wring that wrinkled neck. He was uneasy, and with good reason.

He could bear the confinement no longer, and in December began to find his cash getting low. He had let his beard grow, and taken to long, tight pantaloons and a red cap. He felt that, come what might, he must take the risks of daylight.

The chances against him were small. The numberless denunciations of the winter fell chiefly on the rich, the rash in talk, the foes of the strong heads who were ably and mercilessly ruling France. The poor, the obscure, and the cautious bourgeoisie were as a rule safe until, in the spring, something like a homicidal mania took possession of Robespierre and others, who, although they were the most intelligent of the Great Committee, were never in control of a steady majority, and began to fear for their own heads.

Outwardly Paris was gay. The restaurateurs made money; the people were fed by levies of grain on the farmers; and the tumbrel, on its hideous way, rarely excited much attention. The autumn and winter of '93 were not without peril or adventure for the thief. The Palais d'Égalité, once royal, was his favored resort, and with his well-trained sleight of hand he managed to justify the name of the place by efforts to equalize the distribution of what money was left to his own advantage and to the satisfaction of the Crab.

The dark drama went on; but, except the tricoteuses who, like Quatre Pattes, went daily to see the guillotine at work, comparatively few attended this daily spectacle. Paris, wearied of crime and too much politics, was tired of the monotony of slaughter, which had now no shadow of excuse.

"Would the citizen miss the death of the Austrian, the ex-queen?" He would not; he knew better than to say no to Quatre Pattes. Would he go with her? She could get him a good place, and all Paris would be there. All Paris was not to his desire. He said he would go alone. A walk with this four-footed creature and the rattle of her becketing sticks he liked not. He called his dog, and, avoiding the vast assemblage on the Place of the Revolution, found his way to the Rue St. Honoré.

He stood in a crowd against a house. The tumbrel came slowly, and, because of the surging mass of people, paused opposite to him. He looked about him. In a group at a window on the far side of the street he saw a man apparently sketching the sad figure in the cart. It seemed devilish to this poor outcast of the Cité. His face flushed; he asked who that was in the window, at which many were staring. The man he addressed was in black, and looked to be an ex-abbé.

"My son," he said quietly, and with no evidence of caution—"my son, 't is David the painter, he of the Great Committee. He hath no heart; but in another world he will get it again, and then—"

"Take care!" said François. The shouting crowd cried: "Messalina! Down with the Austrian!"

François looked, and saw the bent figure seated in the cart. Pale it was, with a red spot on each cheek, haggard; her gray hair cut close, pitiful; with pendent breasts uncorseted, lost to the horrors of the insults hurled at her abject state. François moved away, and the tumbrel went rumbling on. An hour later he was crossing the broad Elysian Fields amid the scattered crowd. It was over, and few cared. The booths were selling toy guillotines. Of a sudden he missed Toto. He called him, and, hearing him bark, pushed in haste into a large tent filled with women and children and with men in blouses.

"The citizen has not paid," cried the doorkeeper. François saw Toto struggling in the hands of a red-bearded man who was crying out: "Enter! enter! Trial and execution of an émigré dog. Voilà, citizens! Range yourselves." There was the red guillotine, the basket, the sawdust, and poor Toto howling. It was a spectacle which much amused the lower class of Jacobins. "À bas le chien aristocrate!"

François advanced with his cheerful smile. "The citizen is mistaken; it is my dog."

"Where is his carte de sûreté?" laughed the man. "Up with him for trial!"

Four monkeys were the judges. Jeers and laughter greeted François: "No, no; go on!"

He caught the man by the arm. The fellow let fall Toto, who made a hasty exit.

"I denounce thee for an enemy of the republic!" cried the showman. "Seize him! seize him!" Francois broke away, and, using his long arms, reached the entrance. There was no earnest desire to stop him. The doorkeeper caught him by the collar. He kicked as only a master of the savate knows how to kick, and, free of the grip, called to Toto, and plunged into a crowd which made no effort to recapture him. He moved with them, and soon turned to cross the river.

Midway on the bridge he came face to face with Despard. He was ragged and fleshless, the shadow of the well-fed Jacobin he had last seen in the château of Ste. Luce.

"Ciel!" exclaimed François, "thou art starved." He had no grudge against his old partner, but he fully appreciated the danger of this encounter.

He was comforted by the man's alarm. "Come," said François, and took him into a little drinking-shop. It was deserted at this time of day. He easily drew out all he desired to know. Mme. Renée was assuredly dead; and he who threw the gauntlet, the butcher, dead also; and three or more on the fatal stairway. Grégoire had punished the village severely; heads had fallen. Pierre's friend Robespierre had abandoned him, had even threatened him—Pierre! but he had escaped any worse fate. He was half famished; and would François help him? François ordered bread and cheese and wine. He would see what next to do. And what of the marquis? He had not appeared in the lists of the guillotined; but he might readily have died unnamed, and escaped François's notice.

"No," said Pierre, sadly; "he lives. Of course he lives. The devil cannot die. He got away from Grégoire. Who could keep that man? But for thee and the accursed commissioner, I should have had my revenge. We shall meet some day."

"Shall I find him for thee?"

"Dame! no. Let us go out. I am uneasy; I am afraid."

"But of what?"

"I do not know. I am afraid. I am accursed with fear. I am afraid as a man is in a dream. Somewhere else I shall cease to fear. Let us go." He was in a sweat of pure causeless terror, the anguish of an emotion the more terrible for its lack of reason. It was the inexplicable torment of one of the forms of growing insanity. François looked on, amazed and pitiful. The man's eyes wandered here and there; he got up, and sat down again, went to the door, looked about him, and came back. At last, as François began to consider how to be free of a dubious acquaintance, Pierre said drearily:

"Is it easy to die? I should like to die. If I were brave like thee, I should drown myself."

"Ah, well," laughed François, "there is the guillotine—short and comfortable."

"Thou wilt not denounce me?" he cried, leaping to his feet. "I have my carte; I will let thee see it." He was like a scared child.

"Nonsense!" cried François, with good-humored amusement. "I must go. Here is a gold louis. Why dost thou not rob a few Jacobins?"

"Hush! I dare not; I was brave once. Thou didst save me once; help me now. Thou wilt not let me starve?"

"No, indeed. I? Not I. Take care of thy louis; they are scarce. Meet me here at this hour in a week. Adieu. At this hour, mind."

"Art thou going to leave me alone?"

François was grieved, but could not remain, and hastened away, while Pierre looked after him with melancholy eyes.

"Come, Toto," he said, as he turned a corner. "The man is mad. Let us thank the bon Dieu we never have had a wife; and the rest of our relatives we have buried—papa and mama, and all the family."

It was not in the man to forget, and a week later he cautiously entered the little café to keep his engagement. It was noisy. To his surprise, he saw Pierre declaiming lustily to half a dozen blouses.

"Ah!" he cried, seeing François, "mon ami, here is a seat. There is good news from the frontier. A glass for the citizen." Clink, clink. "À vous*. Death to royal rats!" He went on in a wild way until the workmen had gone, and François stopped him with:

"What the deuce has come to thee?"

"Oh, nothing. I have had one of the fits you know of; I am always better after them. Diable! no marquis could scare me to-day. I saw him last week, I did. I followed him. It is he who would have been scared. I—I missed him in a crowd. In a minute I should have had him, like that," and he turned a glass upside down so as to capture a fly which was foraging on the table—"like that," he repeated triumphantly.

François watched him, and saw a flushed face, tremulous hands, staring eyes.

"He is afraid; he can't get out"; and the man laughed low, pointing to his prisoner.

"And thou wouldst have denounced him?" said Francis.

"Why not? He is one of them. He is hell; he is the devil! I saw no officers to help me."

"Thou art cracked; thou wilt denounce me next."

Pierre looked at François with unusual steadiness of gaze, hesitated, and replied:

"I thought of it; you are all for these people."

François, in turn, looked his man over curiously. He had now a queer expression of self-satisfied elation. "A good joke, that," said François. "Wait a moment; I left Toto outside." He went to the door, and looked up and down the street. "Wait," he cried to Pierre. "Hang the dog!" And in an instant he had left the citizen to abide his return. Once in his garret, he cried: "Toto, thou hast no sense. The sane scoundrels are bad enough, but why didst thou fetch on me this crazy rascal? And so the marquis got away, Toto. The man with the wart is not as clever as I thought him. But some folks have luck."

The sad winter of the Terror wore on, while François continued to live unmolested, and pursued his estimable occupation always with an easy conscience, but often with an uneasy mind.

It was near the end of the pleasant month of May, 1794—the month Prairial of the new calendar. The roses were in bloom. The violets were seeking sunshine here and there, half hidden in the rare grasses of the trampled space of the Place of the Revolution. On the six bridges which spanned the canals, its boundaries, children were looking at the swans. In the middle space, the scaffold and cross-beams of the guillotine rose dark red against the blue sky of this afternoon of spring. Two untidy soldiers marched back and forth beside it. The every-day tragedy of the morning was over; why should the afternoon remember? The great city seemed to have neither heart nor memory. The drum-beat of a regiment going to the front rang clear down the Quai des Tuileries. People ran to see; children and their nurses left the swans. The birds in the trees listened, and, liking not this crude music, took wing, and perched on the beams of the monstrous thing in the center of the Place.

François crossed the open ground, with Toto close to heel. The keeper of the little café where he liked to sit had just told him that the citizen with whom he had twice come thither had been asking for him, and that with this citizen had also come once a stout man, who would know where Citizen François lived. This last was of the fourth section, one Grégoire, a man with a wart.

"Thou didst notice the man?" said François, much troubled.

"Notice him? I should think so. Dame! I am of the Midi. A wart on a man's nose is bad luck; the mother of that man saw a cocatrice egg in the barn-yard."

"A cocatrice egg! What the mischief is that!"

"Tiens! if you were of the Midi, you would know. When a hen cackles loud, 't is that she hath laid a great egg; the father is a basilisk."

"Tonnerre! a basilisk?"

"Thou must crush the egg, and not look, else there is trouble; thy next child will have warts, or his eyebrows will meet, and then look out!" François's superstition was vastly reinforced by this legend.

"Mon Dieu!" he cried; "he hath both." This François was a bold man when he had to meet danger face to face, but, like a child as to many things, afraid where a less imaginative man would have been devoid of fear.

Just now he had been turning over in his mind the chance of the Crab's betraying him. She had been prowling about his garret, and had stolen a well-hidden score of francs. He dared not complain. What scant possessions he had would fall into her claws if at any minute she might choose to denounce him. Of late, purses were too well guarded. The display of luxury in lace handkerchiefs and gold seals no longer afforded an available resource. Except Robespierre, who defied popular sentiment, few men carried two watches. Quatre Pattes had the appetite of a winter wolf, and was becoming more and more exacting. She asked why he did not sell his rapier. If it were known that he withheld weapons such as the republic claimed, there might be trouble. Why had he not given up his pistols? They were gold-mounted, and had belonged to a grandee of Spain. Why not sell them? They would fetch a deal of money.

He was not inclined to part with his arms, and least of all with his rapier. At last he gave her one pistol, which she sold; the other he hung high up on a peg set within the chimney, having hidden in its barrel the precious little document he had captured from Citizen Grégoire in that pleasant inn on the Seine, where an agreeable evening had ended with such unaccountable abruptness.

Next to the Crab's treachery, he feared most to meet Despard when the Jacobin should chance to be in one of those aggressive moods which were so puzzling to François. But above all did he dread Grégoire, and grew terrified as he reflected on that business of the cocatrice egg and the basilisk.

It seemed as though he were doomed, and this most cheery of men became distinctly unhappy. "That sacré basilisk!" he muttered, and, less on guard than usual, wandered on, taking stock of his perplexities.

Near to the foundations of the Madeleine, where work had long since ceased, he paused to recreate himself with a puppet-show. The vanquished fiend was Citizen Jean Boule. He was soon guillotined. The crowd was merry, and François, refreshed, contributed his own share of appreciative mirth. In the throng he unluckily set his big foot on the toes of a little Jacobin dressed in the extreme of the fashions these gentry affected. The small man was not to be placated by François's abundant excuses, and demanded the citizen's card of safety. It was an everyday matter. No one dared to refuse. There were half-insane men, in those times, who satisfied their patriotism by continually exacting cards from timid women or from any well-dressed man. To decline was to break the law. François obeyed with the utmost civility. The little man returned the card.

"The citizen is of the best of the sections, but, sacré! he is heavy."

Much relieved, François went on. In the Rue St. Honoré the corner of a lace handkerchief invited a transfer, and lace handkerchiefs were rare. As there was a small, well-occupied group looking through a shop-window at a caricature of Mr. Pitt, the occasion appeared propitious, and the handkerchief changed owners.

A minute later a man touched François's shoulder.

"Thy card, citizen!"

"The deuce!" said the thief, as he turned. "This gets monotonous. Mon Dieu, the marquis!" he exclaimed.

"Hush! Your card. You are followed—watched. There is this one chance." Francis produced his card. The marquis murmured, "Take care; obey me." Holding the card in his hand, he called authoritatively to a municipal guard who was passing. The man stopped, but no one else paused. Curiosity was perilous.

"This good citizen is followed by that man yonder—the one with the torn bonnet. I know the citizen. Here is his card and mine. Just tell that fellow to be careful"; and he slipped his own card of safety into the guard's hand, and under it three louis. The guard hesitated; then he glanced at the card.

"'T is in order, and countersigned by Vadier of the Great Committee. These spies are too busy; I will settle the fellow. Good morning, citizens."

They moved away quietly, in no apparent haste. As they were turning a corner, the thief looked back.

"I am a lost man, monsieur!" He saw, far away, the man of the torn red bonnet, and with him Quatre Pattes. She was evidently in a rage. He understood at once. In the thieves' quarter denunciations were not in favor. She knew too well the swift justice of this bivouac of outcasts to risk being suspected as a traitor to its code. The night before, he had been unable to give her money, and had again refused to sell his weapons. She had angrily reminded him that he was in her power, and he had for the first time declared that he would let the Cité settle with her. He had been rash, and now, too late, he knew it.

He hastily explained his sad case to the disguised gentleman, and was on the point of telling him that this Quatre Pattes was that Mme. Quintette who had once been his agent, and would probably be an enemy not to be despised. He glanced at the marquis, and, wisely or not, held his tongue.

"We must part here," said the gentleman. He had hesitated when chance led him to the neighborhood of the thief in trouble; but he was a courageous man, and disliked to owe to an inferior any such service as François had more than once rendered him. Vadier's sign manual on his own card of safety was an unquestioned assurance of patriotism; it had cost him a round sum, but it had its value.

When he said, "I must leave you," the thief returned:

"I am sorry, monsieur; I know not what to do or where to go."

"Nor I," replied Ste. Luce, coldly. "Nor, for that matter, a thousand men in Paris to-day." He had paid a debt, and meant to be rid of a disreputable and dangerous acquaintance. "Better luck to you!" he added.

"May I say to monsieur, who has helped me, that Despard is in Paris, and has seen him?"

The marquis turned. "Why did not you kill him when you had the chance?"

"You forbade me."

"That is true—quite true. Had you done it without asking me, I had been better pleased."

"I had no grudge against him."

"Well, well, thank you, my man; I can look out for myself."

"Will monsieur accept the gratitude of a poor devil of a thief?"

"Oh, that is all right. One word more. It is as well to tell you, my man, how I came to speak to you. When first I observed you, as I fell behind, I saw that terrible old witch with two sticks pointing you out to the fellow with the torn cap; then he followed you."

"It was Quatre Pattes, monsieur. I lodge in her house."

"A good name, I should say. I wish you better luck and safer lodgings. Adieu"; and he went quietly on his way.