The first instinct of Jean Marot had been to kill Henri Lerouge.
Revenge is the natural heritage of his race. Revenge is taught as a sacred duty in the common schools of France. Revenge keeps the fires aglow under the boilers of French patriotism. Revenge is the first thought to follow on the heels of private insult or personal injury.
It had been that of the ignorant human animal called Madeleine. How the horrible design of Madeleine had chilled his blood! He was sorry for the unhappy girl with a natural sympathy; yet he would have torn her to pieces had she successfully carried her scheme of revenge into execution.
Jean took to haunting Montrouge day and night, invariably passing down Rue Dareau and contemplating No. 7, keeping his eye on the porte-cochère and the fourth floor, as if she might be passing in or out, or show herself at a lighted window. But he never saw her,—never saw Lerouge. He never seemed to expect to see them.
He had ceased to attend classes. What were books and classes to him now? He took more absinthe than was good for him.
His father's friend, Dr. Cardiac, visited him, remonstrated with him, readily diagnosed his case, then wrote to Monsieur Marot the elder. The result of this was a peremptory call home. To this summons Jean as promptly replied. He refused to go. An equally prompt response told him he had no home,—nofather,—and that thenceforth he must shift for himself,—that he had received his last franc.
Ten days later he unexpectedly encountered Mlle. Fouchette on Boulevard St. Michel. It was Saturday evening, and all the student world was abroad. But perhaps of that world none was more miserable than Jean Marot.
"Ah! Then it is really you, monsieur?" There was a perceptible coldness in her greeting. However, his condition was apparent. The sharp blue eyes had taken his measure at a glance. She interrupted his polite reply.
"Là! là! là! Then you are in trouble. You young men are always in trouble. When it isn't one thing it is another."
"It is both this time, I'm afraid," he said, smiling at the heavy philosophy from such a light source.
They crossed over and walked along the wall of the ancient College d'Harcourt, where there were fewer people. The dark circles under his handsome eyes seemed to soften her still further.
"I am sorry for you, monsieur."
"Thank you, mademoiselle."
"And poor Madeleine——"
"You have seen her, then?"
"Oh, of course!"
"Of course," he repeated.
"But, monsieur, you may not know that you were suspected of——"
"Go on," seeing her hesitation. "Of having something to do with it?"
"Precisely."
"I knew that."
To avoid the crowd and curious comment, Jean turned into the Luxembourg garden.
"Well," he resumed, "you said I was suspected first by the police, then——"
"By me," she said, promptly.
"By you!"
"Yes, monsieur."
"And what, my dear mademoiselle, had I done to merit so distinguished an honor?"
"Dear me! monsieur, it was chiefly what you hadn't done; and then the circumstantial evidence, you must confess, was strong."
"I realized that, also that in France it is not easy to get out of prison, once in it, innocent or guilty."
"So you kept out. Very wisely, monsieur. But you know the papers next morning spoke of Madeleine's lover, and talked of the lost clue of the Place St. Jacques, where we met."
"It certainly would have been suspicious under some circumstances," he admitted. "Now, if I had been her lover, for instance——"
"There! I went to the hospital. And don't you know, she would not betray the man who did it, though she suffered horribly. She will lose one of her eyes, poor girl!"
"Great heavens! What a misfortune!"
"Yes!"
"And she would not betray her assailant?"
"Not a word!" exclaimed Mlle. Fouchette. "I never believed Madeleine could rise to that."
"Nor I," said Jean.
"And the police did worry that Lerouge," continued the girl.
"Oh, they did?"
"Yes; but he easily proved that he was not only not Madeleine's lover, but that he was out somewhere with his—his——"
"Mistress, eh?" he said, bitterly. "Why not say it?"
"With his friend," she added, her eyes on the ground.
"Ugh!"
"But you, monsieur,—you have not yet told me your troubles. Your love goes badly, I suppose, eh?"
"Always."
"It is the same old thing. I wonder how it is to be loved thus. Very nice, no doubt."
"And has no one ever loved you, mademoiselle?" he asked.
"Non!"
"You astonish me! And the world is so full of lovers, too."
"I mean no man."
"Are you sure?"
"Very sure, monsieur. Could one be loved like that and not know it?"
"That is what I ask myself every day." He said this to himself rather than to his wondering companion.
"Why, monsieur!——"
"But there are other things just now,—to-day," he said, abruptly changing the subject; "and the worst thing——"
"The worst thing is money," she interrupted. "Ihave had 'the worst thing.' It happens every now and then. You need not hesitate."
"Worse yet," he continued, smiling in spite of himself at her conclusion.
"I can tell it in advance. It is the old story. Your love is not reciprocated,—you neglect your classes,—you fail in the exams,—you take to absinthe. Ah, çà!"
"Still worse, mon enfant."
"Ah! You play——"
"No. I never play. You are wrong only that once, mademoiselle."
He told her the truth. And she listened with the sage air of one who knows all about it and was ready with her decision.
"Monsieur Marot,"—she paused a second,—"you think I'm a bad girl——"
"Oh, don't be too sure of that. I——"
"Ah, çà!" impatiently waving his politeness aside; "but I owe you much, and I would do you a service if possible."
"I thank you, mademoiselle."
"You think it impossible? Perhaps. I am nothing. I am only a poor little woman, monsieur,—alone in the world. But I know this world,—I have wrestled with it. I have had hard falls,—I got up again. Therefore my experience has been bitter; but still it is experience."
"Sad experience, doubtless."
"Yes; and it ought to have taught me something, even if I were the most stupid and vicious, eh?"
"Surely," he said.
"And my counsel ought to have some value in your eyes?"
"Why, yes; certainly, mademoiselle."
"At least it is disinterested——"
"Sure!"
"Go home!"
"But——"
She interrupted him sharply, nervously grasping his passive hand.
"Go home, Monsieur Jean,—at once!"
She trembled, and her voice grew low and softly sweet, and almost pleading.
"Go home, Monsieur Jean! Leave all of this behind,—it is ruin!"
"Never! I cannot do that, mademoiselle. Besides, it is too late,—it is impossible! I have no home, now. Never!"
"There!"
Mlle. Fouchette rose abruptly, shrugging her narrow shoulders with the air of having done what she could and washing her hands of the consequences. Her smile of half pity, half contempt, for the weakness of a strong man clearly indicated that she had expected nothing and was not disappointed. As he still remained absorbed in his own miserable thoughts, she returned to the attack in a lively manner.
"So that is out of the way," she said. "Now let us see what you are going to do. You probably have friends?"
"A few."
"Do not trust to friends, monsieur; it will spare you the humiliation of finding them out. What are your resources?"
"I have none," he replied.
"How much money have you?"
"Nothing!"
"Ah, monsieur,"—she now sat down again, visibly softened,—"if you will come and dine with me and petite Poupon we can talk it all over at leisure, n'est-ce pas? I can make a bien joli pot-au-feu for a franc,—which means soup, meat, and vegetables; and I know a petite marchande de vins where one can get a litre of Bordeaux for cinquante, which, with a salade at two sous and cheese for two more, will round out a very good dinner for two. Ah! le voilà!"
She wound up her rapid summary of culinary delights with the charming eagerness of a child, bringing forth from the folds of her dress a small purse, through the netting of which glistened some silver coin, and causing it to chink triumphantly.
Jean Marot, suddenly lifted out of himself by this impulsive good-nature, was at first embarrassed, then stupefied. He was unable to utter a word. He was ashamed of his own weakness; he was overwhelmed by the sense of her impetuous good-will and practical human sympathy. He silently pressed the thin hand which had unconsciously crept into his.
"No, it is nothing," she said, lightly, withdrawing her hand. "I have plenty to-day,—you will have it some other day; and then you can give me a petit souper, monsieur, n'est-ce pas?"
"Very well. On that condition I will accept your invitation, mademoiselle. We will dine with petite Poupon."
He had not the heart to tell her that his "nothing" meant a few hundred francs to his credit and a fewlouis in his pocket at that moment,—more than she had ever possessed at any one time in her life.
As it was, she walked along by his side with that feeling of camaraderie experienced by those in the same run of luck as to the world's goods, and with that buoyancy of spirit which attends a good action. The few francs and odd sous in the little purse were abundant for to-day,—the morrow could take care of itself.
They turned up the narrow Rue Royer-Collard, where she stopped for the litre of Bordeaux, responding gayly to the wayside queries and comments. Reaching the Rue St. Jacques, there were the salad and the cheese to add to the necessary part of the French meal; and the bit of beef and the inevitable onions brought up the rear of purchases.
"I have some potatoes and carrots," she said, reflectively,—"so much saved. Let us see. It is not so bad,—quatre-vingt-cinq, dix, cinquante,—un franc quarante-cinq."
She made the calculation as they went up the worn stairway after the passage of the tunnel.
"Not half bad," said he, compelled to admire her cleverness.
Reaching her chamber, she deposited the entire evening investment on the hearth, proceeding to the preliminary features of preparation. She threw her hat on the bed, then pulled off the light bolero and sent it after the hat, and then she began slipping out of her skirt by suddenly letting it fall in a ring about her feet.
"Oh!" said Jean.
"Excuse me, will you? I can't risk my pretty skirt for appearances. You won't mind, monsieur? Non!"
"That's right," he said,—"a skirt is only a skirt."
He watched her with a half-amused expression as she flitted nervously about, more doll-like than ever she was, in the short yellow silken petticoat with its terminating ruffles, or cheap lace balayeuse, her blonde hair loosely drooping over her ears and caught up behind in the prevailing fashion of the quarter. She kept up a continual chatter as she opened drawers, prepared the potatoes, and arranged the little table.
Poupon was already singing in the chimney-place. Her conversation, by habit, was mostly directed to her little oil-stove, as if it were a sentient thing, something to be encouraged by flattery and restrained by reproach. It was the camaraderie of loneliness.
But to Jean, who was quick to fall back into his own reveries, her voice died away into incomprehensible jargon. Once he glanced at the sketch still on the wall and thought of her purring over her work like a satisfied cat, then the next instant again forgot her. Now and then she bestowed a keen glance on him or a passing word, but left him no time to answer or to formulate any distinct idea as to what it was about. Suddenly she pounced upon him with,—
"Monsieur Marot?"
"Well?"
"You still live——"
"Faubourg St. Honoré."
"Mon Dieu! How foolish!"
"Yes,—now," he admitted.
"You must change. What rent do you pay?"
"Fourteen hundred——"
"Dame! And the lease?"
"Two years yet to run," said he.
"Peste! What a bother!"
"But the rent is paid."
"Oh, very well. It can be sold. And the furniture?"
"Mine."
"Good! How much?"
"It cost about three thousand francs."
"It's a fortune, monsieur," she exclaimed, with sparkling eyes. "And here I thought you were—purée!"
"Broke?"
"Yes,—that you had nothing."
"It is not much to me, who——"
"No; I understand that. I once read of a rich American who committed suicide because he was suddenly reduced to two hundred and fifty thousand francs. That was very drôle, was it not?"
"To most people, yes; but it would not be funny for one who had been accustomed to twice or five times that much every year."
"No,—I forgot," she said, reflectively, "about your affairs, monsieur. It is very simple."
"Is it?" He laughed lugubriously.
"You simply accept conditions. You give up your present mode of living; you sell your lease and furniture; you take a small place here somewhere, get only what is necessary, then find something to do. Why, you will be independent,—rich!"
"Only, you omit one thing in the calculation, mademoiselle."
She divined at once what that was.
"One must arrange for the stomach before talking about love. And how, then, is a young man to provide for a girl when he can't provide for himself? Let the girl alone until you begin to see the way. Don't be ridiculous, Monsieur Jean. No woman can love a man who is ridiculous. Jamais!"
Love is not exactly a synonyme for Reason. To be in love is in a measure to part company with the power of ratiocination. Nevertheless, Jean saw in an absent-minded way that Mlle. Fouchette, for whom he had never entertained even that casual respect accorded by the Anglo-Saxon to womanhood in general, spoke the words of sense and soberness. His intolerant nature, that would never have brooked such freedom from a friend, allowed everything from one who was too insignificant to excite resentment or even reply. In the same fashion Jean was touched by the exhibition of human interest and womanly sympathy in this waif of civilization. And he was of too gentle a heart not to meet it with a show of appreciation. It gave her pleasure and did not hurt him. The fact that she was probably abandoned and vicious in no wise lessened this consideration,—possibly increased his confidence in her disinterested counsel.
In Paris one elbows this species every day,—in the Quartier Latin young Frenchmen come in contact with it every night,—and without that sense of self-abasement or disgust evoked by similar association in the United States. The line of demarcation that separatesrespectability from shame is not rigidly drawn in Paris; in the Quartier Latin, where the youth of France and, to a considerable extent, of the whole world are prepared for earth and heaven, it cannot be said to be drawn at all.
By his misfortunes Jean Marot had unexpectedly fallen within her reach. With her natural spirit of domination she had at once appropriated the position of mentor and manager. The precocious worldliness of her mentality amused while it sometimes astonished him. This comparatively ignorant girl of eighteen had no hesitation in guiding the man of more mature years, and succeeded through her naïveté rather than by force of character. The weakest of women can dominate the strongest of men.
"Doctors never prescribe for themselves," she said, by way of justifying her interest in him. "Is it not so, Monsieur Jean?"
"No; but they call in somebody of their own profession," he replied.
"Not if he had the same disease, surely!" she retorted.
"So you think love a disease?" he laughingly asked.
"Virulent, but not catching," said she, helping him to some soup.
There were no soup-plates and she had dipped it from the pot with a teacup and served it in a bowl; but the soup was just as good and was rich with vegetable nutrition. He showed his appreciation by a vigorous onslaught.
"And if it were a disease and catching?" he remarked presently.
"Then you would not be here," she replied. "You see, I'd run too much risk. As it is—have some more wine?—But who understands love better than a woman, monsieur?"
"Oh, I surrender, mademoiselle,—that is, provided she has loved and loves no longer."
"Been sick and been cured, eh?" she suggested. "But that is more than you require of the medical profession."
"True——"
He paused and listened. She turned her head at the same moment. There were two distinct raps on the wall. He had heard, vaguely, the sound of persons coming and going next door; had distinguished voices in the next flat. There was nothing strange about that. But the knock was the knock of design and at once arrested his attention.
The young girl started to her feet, her finger on her lips.
"He wants me," she said.
"That is evident, whoever 'he' may be," replied Jean, significantly.
"Oh, it is only Monsieur de Beauchamp. A sitting, perhaps," she added.
She slipped out of the room without deeming it necessary to resume her overskirt. The feminine inhabitants of Rue St. Jacques were so extremely unconventional,—they not infrequently went down into the street for rolls and other articles attired in this charming negligée of the bedroom boudoir. And would, perhaps, have extended this unconventionality to the neighboring cafés, only the proprietaires hadto draw a line somewhere, and had unanimously drawn it at hats and skirts, or full street dress.
Jean began to think himself entirely deserted, when Mlle. Fouchette burst rather than walked into the room conducting her next-door neighbor.
Jean saw before him a man scarcely older than himself, rather spare of figure and pale of face, in the garb of a provincial and with an air of the Jesuit enthusiast rather than the student of art. His long, dark hair was thick and bushy and worn trimmed straight around the neck after the fashion of Jeanne d'Arc's time. It completely hid his ears and fell in sprays over his temples. His face was the typical Christ of the old masters, the effect being heightened by the soft, fine, virgin beard and moustache of somewhat fairer color, and by the melancholy eyes, dark and luminous, with their curled and drooping lashes. These eyes gave rather a suggestion of sadness and inward suffering, but when animated seemed to glow with the smouldering fire of centuries.
"Pardon, Monsieur de Beauchamp," said Jean, upon being introduced to him, "but mademoiselle appears to have forgotten me for art."
"Ah! and as if there were no art in making a salad!" exclaimed the painter, as he shook hands with the other.
"Oh! là, là, là!" cried Mlle. Fouchette, wresting the dish from Jean's grasp; "there would be precious little art in this if you made it!" And she proceeded with the salad on her own account, using the two bowls that had but recently served them for soup.
Monsieur de Beauchamp and Jean discussed thestudent "manifestations" planned for the next day. The Dreyfusardes—a term by which all who differed from the military régime were known—had announced a public meeting, and a counter-demonstration had been called to not only prevent that meeting but to publicly chastise such as dared to take part in it.
No attempt was made to conceal these patriotic intentions from the police. The walls blazed with flaming revolutionary posters. The portrait of the Duc d'Orléans appeared over specious promises in case of Restoration. The Royal Claimant was said to be concealed in Paris. At any rate, his agents were busy. They were in league with the Bonapartists, the Socialists, the Anti-Semites, against the things that were, and called the combination Nationalists. They were really Opportunists. The republic overthrown, they agreed to fight out their rival claims to power between themselves.
The unfortunate Jew merely served them as a weapon. They were the real traitors to their country. With the most fulsome adulation and the Jew they courted the army and sought to lead it against the republic.
And the republic,—poor, weak, headless combination of inconsistencies,—through a tricky and vacillating Ministry and a bitter, factional Parliament, greatly encouraged the idea of any sort of a change.
Popular intolerance had, after a farcical civil trial overawed by military authority, driven the foremost writer of France into exile, as it had Voltaire and Rousseau and many thousands of the best blood of the French before him.
The many noble monuments of the Paris carrefours, representing the élite of France, the heroes, the apostles of letters and liberty, who were murdered, exiled, denied Christian burial or dragged through the streets after death by Frenchmen, stand morally united in one grand monumental fane commemorative of French intolerance.
Wherever is reared a monument to French personal worth, there also is a mute testimonial of collective French infamy.
"Dans la rue!" was now the battle-cry.
All of these student "manifestations" were seized upon by the worst elements of Paris. The estimable character of these elements found in the Place Maubert and vicinity may be surmised from the fact that a few days previous to the event about to be herein recorded twenty men of the neighborhood were chosen to maintain its superiority to the Halles Centrales against a like number selected by the latter.
The contending factions were drawn up in order of battle in Place Maubert, on Boulevard St. Germain, in broad afternoon, each man being armed with a knife, and precipitated an engagement that required one hundred police reserves to quell.
"If we could only keep that pestiferous gang out of our manifestations," said Jean now to Monsieur de Beauchamp,—"they disgrace us always!"
"Oh, but they are good fighters; and there is to be fighting pretty soon," observed the artist.
"Vive l'armée!" cried Mlle. Fouchette, flourishing a salad-spoon. Mlle. Fouchette had a martial spirit.
"Whenever a student is arrested he turns out to beone of the roughs of Place Maubert or a hoodlum of Rue Monge, or a cutthroat of Rue Mouffetard. It is disgraceful!"
"But it shows the discretion of our police, Monsieur Marot," said the artist, with his sweet smile. "You see the police are with us. We must not be too particular who fights on our side, my friend. We can't afford to quarrel with anybody just now going in our direction. They are but means to an end, let us remember, and that end the ancient prestige and glory of France."
"À bas les Juifs!" exclaimed Mlle. Fouchette, without looking up.
The godlike face of the painter glowed with the enthusiasm that consumed his soul. He now turned his grand eyes upon the girl with inexpressible sadness.
"That is a question that does not concern us," said he, "except as another means to an end. Innocent or guilty, shall the pleasure or pain of one man stand between the millions of our countrymen and the welfare and perpetuity of France?"
"Never!" cried Mlle. Fouchette, in her excitement bringing down the salad-bowl with a crash that sent the pieces flying about the room.
"Parbleu!" exclaimed Jean, laughing heartily; "there goes my salad!"
"No; the salad is here. There goes my pretty bowl!"
"Very well, then, let us turn out to-morrow, Monsieur Marot, and do our duty. Au revoir."
In parting the artist nodded his head in cold recognition of the existence of Mlle. Fouchette. The latterturned on her dainty heel with a glance at Jean that spoke volumes. But she began arranging the little table slowly, absent-mindedly, without a word. He thought she was lamenting the loss of the salad-bowl.
"I'll buy you a pretty one," he said.
"A pretty—er—a what?"
"Salad-bowl."
"Oh, dame! I was not thinking of the salad-bowl."
"Something more serious?"
"Yes. Don't go to-morrow, Monsieur Jean!"
Her voice was earnest, but sunk to a whisper. He regarded her with astonishment.
"Don't go, Monsieur Jean!" she repeated. "Have nothing to do with them! There will be two thousand hired roughs from La Villette, the killers from the abattoirs, and——" She stopped short.
"How now, mon enfant? How——"
But she had clapped her small hand over his mouth in a half-vexed, half-frightened way, with a definite gesture towards the next room.
"Have a care, monsieur," she whispered in his ear, then laughingly resumed her bantering tone. "How do you like my salad? Is it not capital?"
Jean Marot found Mlle. Fouchette interesting but incomprehensible.
Jean believed himself to be a sincere and true republican,—and he was, in fact, quite as logical in this as were many of the so-called republicans of the French Parliament, who, like their familiar political prototypes in the United States, talked one way and voted another. He had participated in the street disturbances as a protest against the Ministry and for the pure love of excitement, not against the republic.
As to the Dreyfus case, he had been satisfied, with most of his countrymen, upon the statement of five successive ministers of war.
After all, in a country where so many have always stood ready to sell their national liberty for the gold of the stranger, it came easy to believe in one Judas more.
The United States has had but one Benedict Arnold; France counts her traitors by the thousands. They spring from every rank and are incidental to every age. The word Treachery is the most important word in French domestic history.
And when honest men doubted the justice of a council of war, they were silenced by the specious reasoning of men like M. de Beauchamp. Had Jean been invited to assist in overturning the republic and to put Philippe d'Orléans on the throne, he would have revolted. His political ideals would have been outraged. Yet every act committed by him and by his blind partisans tended directly, and were secretly engineered by others, to that end.
Jean Marot in this was but a fair type of tens of thousands of his intelligent but headstrong and misguided countrymen.
"In the street!"
Once in the street the following day, Jean forgot his serious reflections of the previous night. It was Sunday, the chosen day of battle by sea and land,—a day consecrated to violence and bloodshed by the Paris mob. The students gathered at the divided rendezvous of the Place Panthéon and the Place de l'Odéon. Many of them wore the white boutonniére of the Jeunesse Royalistes, the tricolor, the red rose of communism, or other badge of particular political belief, and all carried canes, some of which were loaded and some of the sword variety. Their leaders excitedly harangued them while the heavy squads of police agents distributed in the vicinity watched the proceedings without interference.
Indeed, the royalists and their allies had abundant reason to believe the police force of Paris, officers and men, civil and military, in sympathy with their movement against the republic. Not one of the many street disturbances of the year past had been the spontaneous outburst of popular anger that is the forerunner of revolution. On every occasion they had been, as they were in this instance, the publicly prearranged breaches of the peace in which the worst elements of the Paris world were invited or hired to join. This was well known to the government. It would have been easy and perfectly legal and wise to have anticipated them by governmental authority. Acting under that authority, a score or two of police agents could havedispersed all preliminary gatherings. Under the eye of such a police force as we have in New York any one of the numerous riots which disgraced the streets of Paris during the pendency of the "Affaire" would have been impossible.
The police of Paris, however, are French,—which is to say that they are incapable of seeing their duty from a strictly impersonal point of view, but are lax to the utmost indifference and partiality or brutal to the extreme of cruelty and fiendishness.
But perhaps the severest censure of the Paris police agent lies in the fact that no just magistrate accepts his unsupported testimony, and that at least two-thirds of his riot arrests are nullified at once by setting the victims at liberty. As the police agent is the creature of the general government and is not responsible to the municipality, he can only be brought to book when he makes the mistake of offending some high personage. To the complaint of an ordinary citizen he would probably reply by drawing his cloak around him and expectorating viciously.
"Qu'est-ce que ça me fiche?"
The students assembled at the Place du Panthéon easily avoided the shadowy blue barrier drawn up across the Rue Soufflot. They howled a good deal in unison, then suddenly disappeared down Rue Cujas, and, pouring into Boulevard St. Michel, joined forces at the foot of Rue Racine with their comrades from the Place de l'Odéon. Like all student manifestations of any sort, the procession made a great noise, sticks were brandished, and the air rent with cries of "Vive l'armée! À bas les traitres!"
The peaceful shopkeepers came to their doors and regarded the young men indulgently. "Ah! la jeunesse n'a q'un temps!"
Some four hundred young men from the great schools were joined at the Place St. Michel by numerous hoodlums and roughs from the purlieus of Rue St. Severin, Place Maubert, and the equally delectable region of Rue de la Hutchette. These patriot soldiers of fortune "émeuted" for the low rate of forty sous per day, and were mostly armed with bludgeons, wherewith to earn their meagre salary. It mattered little whom they served, though it was just now the noble Duc d'Orléans.
The police saw this addition with a knowing eye. They barred the entrance to the Pont St. Michel. It was a half-hearted effort, and with cries of "Vive la liberté!" "En avant!" the mob of young men swept the thin files out of the way and gained the bridge. Not, however, without some kicks and blows, broken canes, and bleeding faces. A lusty gold-laced brigadier rolled in the dust, desperately clinging to two coat-collars, and won the coveted cross by allowing himself to be kicked and stamped almost out of human resemblance by the infuriated mob of rescuers.
By this time the head of the mob had reached the other end of the bridge, where a double barrier of agents was drawn up across the street. A gray-haired commissaire of long and distinguished police service walked calmly forward alone to meet them. His resolute step, his pose, bespoke his dignity and courage. He raised his left hand with the air of authority accustomed to being obeyed.
His keen eyes at once sought and found and held the eyes of the leaders.
"You must go back,—you cannot cross here,—you must disperse——"
"Sacré!" growled the crowd, moving forward threateningly. "We have a right to cross anywhere! We are citizens of Paris and have the rights of any other citizen,—the same as you, Monsieur le Commissaire!"
A dozen such protests on the instant. But the wily veteran was ready. He knew that when a mob stops to parley the battle is half won.
"Oh, yes, messieurs,—singly, or as other good citizens, you are right; but not as——"
A young man reached over his comrades' shoulders and struck the old commissaire in the face with his cane.
"For shame!" cried Jean Marot, indignantly. "What foolishness!" And he broke the cane across his knee and threw the fragments to the ground.
In the same moment the old commissaire dashed into the crowd and single-handed dragged his youthful assailant to the front and clear of his companions.
"The guard! the guard! Look out, comrades! here comes the guard!"
The cry ran along the line and through the ranks hushed by the wanton blow delivered unnecessarily upon a respected official. A company of the Garde Républicaine à pied had filed out across the Boulevard du Palais from behind the Préfecture; another company à cheval debouched into the quai from the other corner, and now rode slowly down towards the bridge.
"Bayonets in front and sabres on the flank!" said Jean to those around him. "It were wise to get out of this."
"Good advice, young man,—get out! It won't do, you see. You must cross singly, or as other citizens. Never mind your hot-headed young friend," added the old man, kindly, as he wiped the blood from his face. "We won't be hard on him. Only, you must go back at once!"
He talked to them as if they were little children. But they needed no further urging. The rear-guard had already turned tail at the sight of the troops and were in full retreat. Before the last man had cleared the bridge the only one who had been arrested was set at liberty, though he had richly earned six months in jail.
And thus terminated the harebrained attempt to march five hundred riotous men through the city directly in front of the Préfecture, where lay unlimited reserves, civil and military, under arms. The royalists had somewhat overstrained the complaisance of the authorities.
Acting at once on the hint of the police official, the crowd broke up into small groups. "À la Concorde! À la Concorde! Concorde!" they cried.
This revolutionary rendezvous was prearranged to mean Place du Carrousel, conditional on police interference. It was to deceive the authorities, the main object being to form a junction with the anticipated hordes from Montmartre and La Villette.
But a mob broken into scattered groups is no longer a mob, and being no longer a mob, there is no longercourage or cohesion of purpose. Instead of some four hundred students and about a hundred roughs, not more than fifty of the former responded at the foot of the Gambetta monument, while the latter class had gathered strength by the way.
This discrepancy, though painfully apparent to Jean Marot and his friends, in no wise dampened their ardor. Their chosen speakers lashed them into fresh furors of patriotism while they waited. The eloquent young man who quoted the words of Gambetta engraved on his monument wrung tears from his sympathetic auditors. These words of wisdom and patriotism had no pertinence whatever to the work in hand,—which was to break up a meeting organized by some distinguished philanthropists, scholars, and their friends in the interests of civil liberty and the perpetuity of human rights,—but everything serves as fuel to a flame well started.
Carried away by the spirit of exaltation, Jean Marot clambered upon the monument itself, and ascending the heroic figure of Gambetta amid the wild plaudits of the mob, kissed the mute stone lips. His hat had fallen to the ground, and now the hysterical crowd tore it into bits and scrambled for the pieces, which they pinned on their breasts as precious souvenirs of the occasion.
When Jean reached the earth it was to be frantically embraced on every side. A great, broad-shouldered, big-bearded man in a cap and the blouse of the artisan crowned this exciting ceremony by kissing the young student full on the mouth.
A score of hats were tendered, but Jean accepted thecap of the stalwart workman, who immediately brandished his club and shouted "En avant!" He unwound his soiled red sash as he started, and, making it deftly into a sort of turban, constituted himself Jean's special body-guard for the day.
The strong force of police posted in the neighborhood of the Louvre had regarded this street drama with stoical indifference. When the noisy crowd surged into the Rue de Rivoli it passed between the mounted videttes of the Garde Républicaine. Farther on, in the Rue St. Honoré, a squad of dismounted cuirassiers stood listlessly holding the bridles of their horses. The afternoon sun flashed electric rays from the plates of burnished steel.
"Vive l'armée!" burst from the mob.
A subaltern on the curb touched his glittering casque in military salute without stirring a muscle of his armored body.
Now recognized leader, Jean directed the march up the narrow Rue de Richelieu, observing to his bearded aide that it was more direct and safe, though shouts of "Avenue de l'Opéra! l'Opéra!" rose from his followers. Jean paid no attention to these cries.
"You are right, my boy!" said the man in the blouse, patting Jean on the shoulder approvingly. "The broad streets are to the agents and military. The cuirassiers can there trample men like flies! Ah! with a regiment of cavalry and a battery of three quick-firers one could hold Paris at the Place de l'Opéra against the world!"
"Yes, my friend," answered Jean, with a smile, "always provided the world agreed not to dropthousand-pound melinite shells on one from Mont Valérien or Montmartre, or from some other place."
"Yes, yes, yes,—you are right, my boy," admitted the other. "En avant!"
This man had the voice of a Stentor. He was also a Hercules of strength. Here and there the narrow street seemed blocked with vehicles; but when he did not terrorize the drivers into immediate flight at the sound of his voice and the sight of his club he would calmly lift the encumbrance and set it to one side.
"En avant!" he would then roar.
Where possible, however, all vehicles promptly fled the street save the omnibuses. From the imperiale of one of these came the cry,—
"Vive la république!"
"Vive l'armée!" yelled the mob.
"Vive la république!" came the response.
A dash was made for the omnibus. While four or five men held the horses a dozen or more clambered over the wheels and up the narrow steps behind. There were sixteen persons on top, seven of whom were women. The latter shrieked. Two fainted away. The assailants sprang upon the men and demanded the one who had dared to consider the health of the republic without the army. No one could or would point him out. On the apparently well established French principle that it is better that ten innocent should suffer punishment rather than that one guilty person should escape the patriotic young men assaulted everybody. A white-haired old man who protested was slapped in the face, another man was quieted by a brutal kick in the abdomen that doubled him up, acouple of foreigners who could neither understand the language nor comprehend what it was all about were roughly handled, a half-grown boy was cuffed,—everybody but the driver came in for blows and insults; and this driver of the omnibus was in all probability the real villain.
"En avant!"
This lesson was administered en route, and without stopping the main body of manifestants pressed on into the grand boulevard, to be swallowed up in the resistless human current that now flowed down upon the Place de l'Opéra.