Part 2 — I FAMINE

On the first day of September, 1793, Nicole left the Rue Maugout with the intention of visiting the Convention. Her step, that a year ago would have been confounded with the hum of life, now echoed down the quiet streets without interruption. Her eye, that once flashed so alertly through the curious crowd, passed with the indifference of habit down the deserted vista, and returned into the fixity of mental abstraction. The passers-by were rare; those who hung on the windows screened themselves. At a few doorways groups of emaciated children watched her progress, eyeing her basket with wolfish eyes. A year had brought but slight change in her. She still retained the bloom of youth, but her glance was more pensive. She was no longer gipsy or girl. A certain thoughtfulness had succeeded, elusive and arch, that told of the awakened imagination.

Twice on her way a band of police enveloping a prisoner passed, as passes a whirlwind over the stretches of the desert. Nicole gave them but a casual glance; such of the inhabitants as the familiar fall of feet brought to the windows retired indifferently, the prisoners themselves stoically adding their resignation to the monotony of the scene.

On the thoroughfares knots of Tapedures, the ruffians of the Terror, became frequent, stalking the town, beating the streets for their human game. Occasionally she met a bill-poster affixing the latest decree of the Republic—violent notes, in blue, violet, yellow, or red, that splashed the walls on every side. About the bakeries and butcher-shops knots of beggars were assembled, often reclining on the ground, watching with dreary, troubled glances those havens of food, ready to battle for a scrap of refuse.

A mother from a distant quarter, drifting from shop to shop, halted before such a group with a timid inquiry. From the loiterers, watching with confident indifference, a hag, extending her shriveled arm, shouted sarcastically:

"Welcome, citoyenne. You want something to eat? Take it; take it. We are so tired of eating meat in this section—nothing but beef and mutton and venison and pheasants here, morning and night. We get tired of that sort of thing in the end, you know. You were right to come here; see how well fed we are, how sleek! Don't believe him, his cellars are full of meat. It's rotting away. No one to eat it!"

From the fasting hags a rumble, rather than a laugh, went up. The woman who had covered perhaps half of Paris melted into a storm of sobs, beseeching a crust or a bone for the sake of her children. Then the hag, her raillery changing to anger, burst out:

"And we, have we no children? Are we not mothers, too? Hark to the woman: she thinks she's the only one to be pitied! Be off! Leave us in peace with your eternal wailings!"

At other times, women from the quarter itself, returning from a scouring of the markets, would awaken a sudden flame of interest.

"What luck?"

"What did you get?"

"Bread?"

"Meat?"

The scouts always denied success. Then a chorus arose:

"She's hiding it!"

"Show us your basket!"

"Eh, and under your dress!"

Once, in the Rue St. Honoré, a slip of a girl had almost freed herself of the questioning crowd, when a lean dog with a sharp nose bounded, sniffing, to her side. There was a quick turning in the crowd, and the nearest woman, leaping to her feet, shouted hysterically:

"I smell dried fish!"

The next moment, up the street a scuttling speck fled before a frenzied cloud from which shot out white arms and grasping hands.

Through such mad scenes of famine, Nicole arrived at the Hall of the Convention; where, being early, she entered the Tuileries to await the arrival of Barabant.

The gardens that once resounded with the hum of life, that once were gay with the swish of many colors, were now brown with the uninterrupted stretch of earth, rustling with the pervading sigh of leaves. Already in the trees, in the air, and in the tired soil was the melancholy of the parting season. Each breath that disturbed the branches, however slightly, set free a caravansary of fluttering leaves, and the leaves were sear.

She seated herself on a bench and abandoning the basket and clasping her knee, watched the whirling leaves heap themselves about her feet. One or two poised on her shoulder, in her hair, without her heeding them. Presently Goursac, also on his way to the Convention, joined her.

"This is the work of the cursed Montagne!" he said grimly, viewing the desolate gardens. "And yet Javogues is not satisfied. He would turn it into a cemetery!"

"Listen, my friend," she said earnestly. "If the Girondins fall, you will not stay to sacrifice your life to Javogues?"

"Do you think that I, a Girondin, would fly from that rascal!" he cried indignantly. "He works in the dark; he is incapable of striking in the open."

"And if the Girondins fall?" she persisted. But he refused to entertain the suggestion.

"This reminds me," he said, with a sweep of his arm, "of the time we were here a year ago. Do you remember?"

She nodded.

"Well," he said brusquely, "are you happy?"

"Yes."

"As happy as you thought?"

"No," she said slowly, "but it is my fault. The fault of my position, if you wish. I am jealous!"

"Of Louison?"

"No! Of what may happen."

"Why shouldn't he marry you?" he said angrily.

"Because I have not asked him," she answered wearily. "And because I would not have it."

"Why?"

"Because I love him, my friend," she said in rebuke. "And because a waif of the streets does not marry a man of education and position unless she wishes to drag him down."

Goursac, to her surprise, leaned over and patted her hand; then, as though ashamed to have shown such tenderness, he added gruffly:

"That is the only thing that can make you happy."

She did not deny it.

"I know what you have passed through."

She shook her head incredulously.

"It is but the history of womankind," he said laconically.

She took a leaf that had fallen on her hair and tore it slowly to shreds.

"Yes," he continued, warming to the subject, "you but resume in a year what woman has struggled for throughout the centuries. What is marriage but the instinct of self-preservation? Who imagined the bond? The weaker being, woman; and all the advances up the social scale have resulted from her silent striving toward equality with man. Without marriage you are a slave at the mercy of an angry word or a hostile mood; a slave who, in her search for security, must learn, without tears or show of fatigue, to render herself indispensable to the man."

Nicole rose abruptly, frowning, and with nervous fingers; but immediately she reseated herself with a forced laugh.

Presently, seeing that he had said more than he should have, he withdrew, leaving her immersed in the reverie his words had awakened.

Goursac had guessed truly. What womankind has endured, she had begun from the bottom. The instinct of self-preservation within her had awakened the immense intuitions that in the silent, enduring conflict of the sexes alike direct the wife, the mistress, and the outcast. She had studied Barabant, seeking the needs of his temperament, discovering his faults, and leading him to gradual dependence on her. Her imagination awoke. She saw the peril of mere domestic companionship. Where at first she had belittled the force of passionate love, she had come to realize its necessity and the need of constantly provoking his curiosity. She hid her thoughts from him, making of herself a mystery, employing that coquetry which, to the seeing eye, has at the bottom nothing but pathos. She had loved as a child. She had become an actress.

But in her heart of jealousy and doubt she knew well all her artifices could avail no longer than her youth. In marriage alone was peace and security. The daring of the thought frightened her. She knew it to be beyond her lot, nor in her devotion to Barabant would she have it so, but each day the dream returned, as from a pit one sees a star, or from a wreck the beacon on the forbidden shore.

Barabant found her lost in reverie, the leaves again unnoticed on her shoulders.

"The effect is pretty," he said, smiling down at her.

"On whom the leaves fall and rest, the earth will fall before the year is out," Nicole said. "That's the superstition."

"Nicole, I forbid you to say such things," he cried sharply. "They hurt me, and you know it!"

Satisfied with this evidence of his affection, she sprang up, brushing away the leaves, and saying with a smile:

"There, they have no power now."

"You are early."

"Yes; I was a little melancholy; I wanted to reflect. The gardens are delightful for that."

"I do not find them so."

"The mood is gone, now that you are here." She took his arm, smiling up into his face. They strolled through the alleys of chestnut and maple, Nicole drawing her skirt across her, placing her feet daintily, shaking her head in pretended anger as from time to time a leaf fluttered against her cheek.

"And the Girondins, mon ami? You have told me nothing of them."

"It grows worse and worse for them. The Jacobins are relentless."

"Don't identify yourself too much with them, then."

"But that is cowardice."

"No. If the Girondins fall, all the more will the Nation need the Moderates," Nicole answered anxiously, for her one dread was of his impulsive nature. "Why play into the hands of our enemies?"

Leaving the gardens, they entered the Place de la Revolution. The vast square that had swarmed with the multitude on the day of the execution of the king was devoid of movement, except where a few curious, wandering toward the emplacement of the absent guillotine, streaked like insects across the placid expanse.

Nearing the plaster statue of Liberty, Nicole was attracted by the lank figure of a man.

"Look over there," she said, drawing Barabant's attention. "Wouldn't you say that it was Dossonville?"

"There's a little resemblance."

"Much."

Barabant, who continued to study the figure, exclaimed:

"Really, the resemblance is striking!"

At this moment the man, turning, disclosed indeed the familiar features, while the well-known voice cried:

"Mordieu! It is Nicole and my little orator Barabant! Well, what's the matter? Touch hands!"

For Nicole, with a movement of superstition, had crossed herself, while Barabant, stock-still, remained staring stupidly at the apparition, until he was able to blurt out:

"What, it is you! Then you're not dead."

"Not even once!" he cried, slapping his hand emphatically across his chest. "I give you my word, it is not true! Come, feel of me. Is this the arm or the chest of a specter?"

"Still, I saw you," exclaimed Nicole, unable to reconcile the fact to her memory—"I saw you at the gate of the Abbaye—"

"My dear girl," Dossonville responded, with much good humor, "believe me, I am not dead; and, what's more, I never have been dead that I remember."

"But—"

"Mordieu, Nicole! are you determined to exterminate me?" Dossonville cried. "Let us reason. You saw me at the gate, but you didn't see me cut down, did you?"

"No."

"Then I reject your theory."

The three burst out laughing, until Dossonville suddenly exclaimed:

"But come, Louison must have told you."

"Louison!" echoed Barabant and Nicole, more and more amazed.

"Extraordinary woman! She can even keep a secret then!" Dossonville cried. "Why, it was Louison who found me in the crowd and piloted me to safety."

He recounted shortly the events of his escape, adding, as he extended his arm in a sweeping embrace of the horizon:

"And here I have lain concealed. I don't say where; the secret is too good. For ten months I lay like a rat. For the last two I have gone out only after midnight. To-day is the first trip into the blessed sun."

"Do you dare to risk it even now?" Barabant cried.

"Yes, now. Everything is arranged," he answered carelessly. "It was a little long coming, but it came."

But suddenly Nicole, remembering, exclaimed: "Barabant, you must warn him that Javogues is back."

"Back!" Dossonville repeated. "When did he leave?"

Barabant, in his turn, recounted the arrest and disappearance of the Marseillais, concluding:

"He reappeared with the rise of the Terrorists."

"Aïe, aïe!" Dossonville cried, having followed the recital with interest; "I cannot say that the situation is pleasant for the Citoyen Goursac."

A shadow passed over the brow of the young man, and he answered bitterly:

"I was a fool. We should have crushed the monster when we had him."

"There's good in him."

"What! You say it?"

"He wanted to cut my throat," Dossonville replied; "but that's nothing. He is sincere. It is true, from his point of view, there are not three men who should be alive in France to-day; but that is only a prejudice. I am keeping you; where are you bound?"

"To the Convention."

"Always a Girondin?"

"Well," Barabant answered doubtfully, "the Girondins had their chance, and they could not control the Convention."

"I say it's their own fault if they fall," Nicole interjected hastily.

"Nicole, you are right," Dossonville replied. "Moreover, they are about to lose their heads." He drew his finger across his neck. "In a political party, that's a grave failing."

"What, guillotine the Girondins!" Barabant exclaimed. "Guillotine Vergniaud, Brissot,—they would never dare!"

"Bah! you look upon it too seriously," Dossonville retorted. "What is the guillotine? Simply a vote of censure. But Louison—where can I find her?"

"At the Prêtre Pendu," Nicole answered. "You'll find her there about noon. That is, if there is no execution this afternoon."

"The Prêtre Pendu? Don't know it."

"It opened lately in the Rue Maugout, opposite No. 38."

"You call it—"

"The Prêtre Pendu."

"Charming!"

"I warn you, Javogues will be there."

"You are positive?"

"Absolutely."

"Good. Then I'll set out at once."