Part 2 — III WAITING FOR BREAD

In this season of famine, when the supply of bread barely sufficed to feed one half of the population, by six o'clock in the evening long lines began to form in front of the bakeries, to await through the long night the morning distribution of loaves. Javogues, who took the occasion of this assembling to study the crowd for signs of traitors or faint-hearted republicans, returned each evening, toward five o'clock, to the Prêtre Pendu in a gale of patriotic ferocity.

But this afternoon, to the astonishment of those who were accustomed to quail before his glance, his lagging step, his knotted club trailing at his heels, and his head relaxed on his shoulders gave every appearance of dejection. At the Prêtre Pendu he sank gratefully into a chair, covered the table with his arms, and plunged moodily into his thoughts.

Presently, arm in arm, bristling with weapons, in villainous shoes wound about with strips of rags, appeared three Tapedures,—Cramoisin the mountebank, Boudgoust the waiter, and Jambony the crier,—thrown together by the strange tides of the Terror. In the middle, Boudgoust strode with hang-dog head, as though his height had overshot his strength. The shriveled, furtive mountebank clung to one arm, while at the other waddled the bloated, leering cub of the gutters. So tightly huddled were they that they seemed one unclean body with three heads—an incongruous union of malignant age, stultified manhood, and vicious, insolent youth.

Perceiving Javogues silent and absorbed, they slackened their pace, and Boudgoust said cautiously:

"Cramoisin, he's still in bad humor."

"It's that cursed Dossonville, my little Boudgoust. If it worries him, why doesn't he get rid of him?"

"Javogues's the devil when aroused," Boudgoust continued apprehensively. He turned to the boy: "Jambony, throttle that voice of a carriage-crier and speak softly. It might be best to slip away."

But Javogues, lifting his head, beckoned them.

"Well, watch-dogs, what luck?"

Cramoisin and Jambony looked to Boudgoust, who turned his pockets inside out, showed the flat of his palms, and answered:

"Nothing."

"An unfortunate day—for all of us," Javogues said gloomily, and relapsed into bitter reflections on his encounter with Dossonville.

"What luck!" exclaimed Cramoisin. "We escaped easily. Suppose we eat something."

Jambony opened his mouth, and the voice, trained to rise above the jargon of the street, resounded from one end of the street to the other.

"Food!"

The invariable bowl of soup and a bottle of thin wine were placed in front of each. Boudgoust, whose appetite was in proportion to his length, accomplished his portion in one swallow, and being thus reduced to philosophizing, exclaimed:

"All citoyens should be made to eat together."

"Nothing new there," Cramoisin interjected querulously. "We have the Fraternal dinners, haven't we?"

"That amounts to nothing," Boudgoust retorted. He leaned his elbows on the table, scratching the back of his hands as he talked: "But every day, every meal. That's democracy! Or, better, no citoyen to eat more than another! If I saw any one eating meat to-night I'd arrest him. All citoyens should share alike."

Jambony, having now emptied his bowl, declared in his stentor's voice:

"And I am for equality of dress. No distinction between citoyens on account of dress! A national costume—one for the men and one for the women!"

Presently, while he launched into the details of his scheme, a raven, with a croak and a flap of its wings, hopped from the gloom of the opposite entrance, followed by the diminutive figure of la Mère Corniche, who, giving a nod of understanding to the four, installed herself on a stool and began to knit.

"There's one who's no Girondin," Boudgoust grunted.

"She's a tiger since the death of Marat," Jambony remarked in a thundering whisper. "She was very devoted. They say—"

And he proceeded to detail one of those fantastic tales which the Parisian playfully attributed to any woman, were she eighty or eighteen.

Cramoisin, having caressed the last drop in his bowl, now exclaimed:

"Jambony, you are tiresome, you and your national costume. You go half-way. What we must restore is the primeval innocence!" As he spoke he pressed a flat thumb on the table, while from under his eyebrows shot the shrewd dagger glances of the madman. "The primeval innocence—there only is the truth! Nothing but that can restore republican simplicity. No clothes at all! A return to the simplicity of Adam and Eve—the true, the real republicans! There's something that would be sublime!"

"Allons, Cramoisin, you have too much vanity!" Boudgoust replied.

"Yes, he wants to display his beauty," put in Jambony, who retained the spirit of raillery gathered at the doors of the theater. "We know that trick, old fellow."

Cramoisin was beginning a furious answer when Javogues, turning impatiently, demanded the hour.

"Close to seven."

"They come later every night," Javogues grumbled. He rang the table with his fist. "Perhaps they think they can hide their guilty faces in the dusk!"

Presently, from the entrances, people with baskets began to appear, directing their way toward the Bakery Gobin, a rod below, to take up the vigil that consumed the night.

Those who passed the Prêtre Pendu waited anxiously their welcome from the mouth of Javogues, whose salutations varied according to his estimate of their patriotism.

"Greetings, patriots."

"Greetings, citoyens."

"Greetings."

To some he simply nodded in return. Occasionally he stiffened and, without recognition, fastened his scrutiny on the eyes of a new arrival, as though to tear away the mask and wrench forth the secret.

Marching purposely toward them, looking Javogues disdainfully in countenance, came Goursac. So implacable were the glances the two enemies exchanged that they seemed to clash midway in the air. Arrived within ten feet of the group, Goursac turned curtly on his heel and departed toward the bakery without having recognized them by word or nod. The Tapedures cursed; Javogues, following him with his glance, muttered:

"Sacré! Girondin, wait a little longer!"

Several women passed, among them Nicole, who received a friendly greeting from Javogues, Boudgoust commenting:

"Fine woman that, Cramoisin, for all you say!"

Cramoisin scowled for an answer, following the girl with a glance of implacable hatred.

"Eh, yes," Jambony added, sinking his voice. "As for me, if it weren't for Javogues I'd not keep her long chained up to that cursed Barabant."

"Barabant," growled Boudgoust, "is an indulgent. He is forever talking of mercy."

"He who speaks of mercy in these days," cried Cramoisin, purposely raising his voice, "is in league with aristocrats. He should be denounced."

Javogues turned angrily:

"Enough! Barabant is a patriot. I know it!"

Boudgoust, who disliked quarrels, interrupted:

"Hello, who's this brat?"

A girl of six or seven was approaching, carrying in her arms a stool.

Javogues, at once suspicious, stopped her.

"Who sent you out, my little one?"

"Papa."

"And who is your father?"

"The wig-maker there," she said, showing the shop with her small finger. "He's coming to take my place later."

"Ah, your papa is a good Royalist."

The child, frightened by his looks, remained twisting from side to side, while Javogues, softening his voice, repeated the question.

The child shook her head.

"What does he say of us?" It was Boudgoust who put the question.

"Don't know."

"But he suffers much with this famine, doesn't he?" suggested Cramoisin, slyly.

"Oh, yes," she answered, the innocent face brightening. "Papa says we suffer more now than before."

Cramoisin, triumphant and smiling, drew back; the child toddled on.

"Ah, Citoyen Flaquet," Javogues cried in triumph, "who doesn't dare pass us in the daylight and who regrets the royalty, we hold you at last!"

Among the next to leave No. 38 was a girl of sixteen, who, in greeting Javogues, faltered a little in her walk. It was Geneviève, suddenly blossomed into a woman. Her eyes, that formerly were too black and large on her sallow face, were now in fair relief to her cheeks, that had flushed with the glow of womanhood. She moved lightly, and even the carelessness of her dress could not conceal the full figure, erect and flexible. The four men watched her pass on and take her place in the lengthening line.

"The best of the lot!" Cramoisin said.

"She was ugly enough last year," Boudgoust replied.

"She was not a woman then," retorted the other, who seized the opportunity to broach his favorite theory. "Women, they're good enough in their places. They're put here to give men to the world. I believe in the community of women. No marriage. Women discriminate according to a man's being old or ugly or poor. All discrimination is unrepublican. There should be no distinctions."

"Yes, my old fellow, but halt there," Jambony said impudently. "No community of men."

"Why not?"

"You'd fall to the lot of la Mère Corniche."

Cramoisin angrily resented the interruption. He passed to the sociological aspect of the reform, and declared that with the Nation battling against all Europe such a measure was needed to fill in the gaps of war. Other bottles were brought and torches.

Below at the bakery, two torches disclosed the undulations of the monstrous queue, but the faces and the outlines of the figures were confounded in the night. Sometimes a brief song would mount up, a few whispered communications could be heard, and the steady snoring of a sleeper.

From there, in the narrow circle of light under the figure of the priest, which swung in grotesque outlines, the four Tapedures could be seen, drinking and discussing. At times their voices, impassioned and drunken, reached the line, the high pitch of Cramoisin crying: "Primeval innocence! community of women!" or the bellow of Javogues, "There is no God!" as the four, without listening to one another, debated furiously their sublime ideas.

From time to time others arrived through the darkness, relieving those in line. Toward midnight Barabant replaced Nicole. Several of the new arrivals were fresh from cabarets; many of those whom no one relieved began in drunken boisterousness to scream upon the night ribald songs and jests, foul anathemas of the party in disfavor.

The noise of kisses and tipsy laughter became frequent. The women and children, accustomed to the scene, retired under shawls and sought to efface themselves against the chilly walls. Some women, more vicious than their mates, joined in the drunken carnival, which toward three o'clock, when the torches dropped back into the night, knew no bounds. And all the while, amid this licentiousness, muffled or in brazen outcry, the line asleep or cringing, whispering or ribald, waited stolidly for the dawn.

Shortly after three, Javogues and his body-guard quitted the cabaret to make the rounds. A single torch held aloft by Boudgoust lit up the huddled queue. They passed down the line, Jambony and Cramoisin embracing the women, Javogues compelling all to cry "Vive la Nation!" and "A bas les Indulgents!" As luck would have it, Cramoisin perceived the face of Geneviève, which, in her curiosity, she momentarily displayed.

The drunkard flung himself forward and seized her in his arms. She defended herself furiously, averting her face, resisting all his efforts to drag her into the street; until Cramoisin, getting his arm around her waist, wrenched her forth screaming in her terror:

"Citoyen Javogues, Citoyen Javogues, protect me! Don't let him take me, Citoyen Javogues!"

Javogues, recognizing the voice, ran up.

"Who've you got there?"

"Don't you see I've got a woman?" Cramoisin said surlily. He added an obscenity that caused the girl, in despair, to exclaim:

"Oh, Citoyen Javogues, save me, save me!"

"None of that," Javogues cried angrily. "Let her go."

As the drunken Cramoisin started to protest, with a blow of his fist he knocked him down. Geneviève, carried down in the fall, flung herself at the feet of Javogues, grasping his knees.

"Thanks, thanks," she cried hysterically. "Citoyen, you are good, you are kind!"

Then fearing to become too prominent, she hurried to her place, enveloping her head with a shawl and crouching back into the friendly obscurity.

Cramoisin, whimpering, disappeared; Javogues, Boudgoust, and Jambony reeled away. Fatigue stilled even the noisiest. The night was achieved in sleep.

Toward six the line roused itself, as two inspectors of the municipality arrived to preside over the distribution of the bread. The doors were opened and the frantic rush began, those in the rear crowding forward with frenzied inquiries, which changed into the familiar shrieks of despair when the doors were closed with a third of the line unserved.

Geneviève, who had received her maximum of bread among the last, avoided the outstretched hands of the unsuccessful and escaped up the street, to where la Mère Corniche, at her post, exacted a tithe from each lodger. Dropping her tribute in the basket, she was hastening on when the concierge retained her with the cry:

"The Citoyen Javogues wants you."

Thinking that it was to fetch water from the Seine, the girl sought her bucket and hastened to the room of the Marseillais. At the sight of the bucket, Javogues frowned and asked:

"What are you doing with that?"

"Don't you want me to fetch water?"

"No."

"Ah."

"Leave the bucket in the corner."

Geneviève obeyed. Javogues shut the door, returned, and frowned again as he saw that she was trembling.

"What is the matter?" he said roughly. "Why do you tremble?"

She shook her head.

"Are you afraid of me?" he said, advancing.

"Oh, no."

"Then what is it?"

"I'm glad—that's all."

"True?"

All at once the girl, flinging herself at his feet, caught his hands and cried:

"I love you, I love you, I love you!"

"What, me!" Javogues cried, amazed, retreating a step. "You love me!"

"I adore you. I think of nothing but you. You are my god!"

"There is no God!"

"Yes, when one loves."

"Then you love me—it's true?" he said, raising her to her feet. "Why do you love me?"

"Why?" She drew a long breath. "You are so big, so heroic!"

Javogues fell back into a chair, repeating:

"Extraordinary! I don't understand."

She threw herself into his arms with the movement of a child, and, without seeking to conceal her thoughts, repeated a hundred caresses while he continued to mumble stupidly:

"Extraordinary! Extraordinary!"

Finally her emotion penetrated him. He took her in his hands and held her from him, she coloring with pleasure at this show of force, which came to her as a caress.

Suddenly a tremor ran through his immense body, an upheaval out of which came something gentle and softened. He continued to hold her before him, without shifting the glance that plunged into her eyes, while the girl, turning in his grasp, repeated, "Let me go!" for, child that she was, she divined what was passing in him.

"But why," he repeated stupidly—"why do you love me? I don't understand. No other woman ever has."

"Because you are so heroic. All the others understand nothing of poverty and sorrow. You—you understand. You give hope to such as I. When I hear you speak those sublime thoughts, my heart swells. You too have suffered; you know the abyss." She added, not without elation: "I loved you from the first day. I never thought you'd notice me."

"It's true—really true, then—what you say to me?"

For all answer she looked at him and smiled.

"It's curious. I don't understand it," he said at last. "But I believe I'm beginning to love you."

Then, without quite knowing why, she lowered her eyes.