The fat woman frowned.
"Madame, your cousin, had a large society; her friends would protect you."
Aline shook her head.
"I don't know who they are, Madame. Mme. de Maillé, to whom my cousin commended me, is also in prison, and others too—many others, the driver of the carriage said. I have nowhere to go, nowhere to go, nowhere at all, Madame."
"Sainte Vierge!" exclaimed the fat woman. The ejaculation burst from her with great suddenness, and she then closed her lips very tightly and walked on for some moments in silence.
"Have you any money?" was her next contribution to the conversation, and Mademoiselle started and put her hand to her bosom. Until this moment she had forgotten it, but the embroidered bag containing her cousin's winnings reposed there safely enough, neighboured by her broken string of pearls. She drew out the bag now and showed it to her companion, who gave a sort of grunt, and permitted a new crease, expressive of satisfaction, to appear upon her broad countenance.
"Eh bien!" she exclaimed. "All is easy. Money is a good key—a very good key, Ma'mselle. There are very few doors it won't unlock, and mine is not one—besides the coincidence! Figure to yourself that I was but now on my way to ask my sister, who is the wife of Bault, the head gaoler of La Force, whether she could recommend me some respectable young woman who required a lodging. I did not look, it is true, for a noble demoiselle,"—here the smooth voice took a tone which caused Mademoiselle to glance up quickly, but all she saw was a narrowing of the eyes above a huge impassive smile, and the flow of words continued—"la, la, it is all one to me, if the money is safe. There is nothing to be done without money."
Mlle. de Rochambeau drew a little away from her companion. She was unaccustomed to so familiar a mode of speech, and it offended her.
The little, sharp eyes flashed upon her as she averted her face, and the voice dropped back into its first tone.
"Well then, Ma'mselle, it is easily settled, and I need not go to my sister at all to-night. It grows dark so early now, and I have no fancy for being abroad in the dark; but one thing and another kept me, and I said to myself, 'Put a thing off often enough, and you'll never do it at all.' My cousin Thérèse was with me, the baggage, and she laughed; but I was a match for her. 'That's what you've done about marriage, Thérèse,' I said, and out of the shop she bounced in as fine a temper as you'd see any day. She's a light thing, Thérèse is; and, bless me, if I warned her once I warned her a hundred times! Always gadding abroad—and her ribbons—and her fal-lals—and the fine young men who were ready to cut one another's throats for her sake! No, no, that's not the way to get a husband and settle oneself in life. Look at me. Was I beautiful? But certainly not. Had I a large dot? Not at all. But respectable—Mon Dieu, yes! No one in all Paris can say that Rosalie Leboeuf is not respectable; and when Madame, your cousin, comes out of prison and hears you have been under my roof, I tell you she will be satisfied, Ma'mselle. No one has ever had a word to say against me. I keep my shop, and I pay my way, even though times are bad. Regular money coming in is not to be despised, so I take a lodger or two. I have one now, a man. A man did I say? An angel, a patriot, a true patriot; none of your swearing, drinking, hiccupping, lolloping loafers, who think if they consume enough strong liquor that the reign of liberty will come floating down their throats of itself. He is a worker this one; sober and industrious is our Citizen Dangeau, and a Deputy of the Commune, too, no less."
Mlle. de Rochambeau, slightly dazed by this flow of conversation, felt a cold chill pass over her. Commissioners of the Commune, Deputies of the Commune! Was Paris full of them? And till this morning she had never heard of the Commune; it had always been the King, the Court; and now, to her faint senses, this new word brought a suggestion of fear, and she seemed for a moment to catch a glimpse of a black curtain vibrating as if to rise. Behind it, what? She reeled a little, gasped, and caught at her companion's solid arm. In a moment it was round her.
"Courage, Ma'mselle, courage then! See, we are arrived. It is better now, eh?"
Mademoiselle drew a long breath, and felt her feet again. They were in an alley crowded with small third-rate shops, and so closely set were the houses that it was almost dark in the narrow street. Mme. Leboeuf led the way into one of the dim entrances, where a strong mingled odour of cabbages, onions, and apples proclaimed the nature of the commodities disposed of.
"Above, it will be light enough still," asserted Rosalie between her panting breaths. "This way, Ma'mselle; one small step, turn to the left, and now up."
They ascended gradually into a sort of twilight, until suddenly a sharp turn in the stair brought them on to a landing with a fair-sized window. Opposite was a gap in the dingy line of houses, and through this gap shone the strong red of the setting sun.
Mlle. de Rochambeau looked out, first at the gorgeous pageant in the sky, and then, curiously, at the strangeness of her new surroundings. She saw a tangle of mean slums, streets nearly all gutter, from which rose sounds of children squabbling, cats fighting, and men swearing. Suddenly a woman shrieked, and she turned, terrified, to realise that a man was passing them on his way down the stair.
She caught a momentary but very vivid impression of a tall figure carried easily, a small head covered with short, dark, curling hair, and a pair of eyes so blue and piercing that her own hung on them for an instant in surprise before they fell in confusion. The owner of the eyes bowed slightly, but with courtesy, and passed on. Madame Leboeuf was smiling and nodding.
"Good evening, Citizen Dangeau," she said, and broke, as he passed, into renewed panegyrics.
CHAPTER IV
THE TERROR LET LOOSE
Jacques Dangeau was at this time about eight-and-twenty years of age. He was a successful lawyer, and an ardent Republican, a friend of Danton, and a fairly prominent member of the Cordeliers' Club.
Under a handsome, well-controlled exterior he concealed an unbounded enthusiasm and a passionate devotion to the cause of liberty. When Dangeau spoke, his section listened. He carried always in his mind a vision of the ideal State, in the service of which a race should be trained from infancy to the civic virtues, inflamed with a pure ambition to spend themselves for humanity. He saw mankind, shedding brutishness and self, become sober, law-abiding, just;—in a word, he possessed those qualities of vision and faith without which neither prophet nor reformer can influence his generation. Dangeau had the gift of speech, and, carried on a flood of burning words, some perception of the ultimate Ideal would rise upon the hearts of even the most degraded among his hearers. For the moment they too felt the glow of a reflected altruism, and forgot that to them, and to their fellows, the Revolution meant unpunished pillage, theft recognised, and murder winked at.
As Dangeau walked through the darkening streets his heart burned in him. The events of the last month had brought the ideal almost within grasp. The grapes of liberty had been trodden long enough in the vats of oppression. Now the long ferment was nearing its close, and the time approached when the wine of life should be free to all; and that glorious moment of anticipation held no dread of intoxication or excess. Truly a patriot might be hopeful at this juncture. Capet and his family, sometime unapproachable, lay prisoners now, in the firm grip of the Commune, and the possession of such hostages enabled Paris to laugh at the threats of foreign interference. The proclamation of the Republic was only a matter of weeks, and then—renewed visions of a saturnian reign—peace and plenty coupled with the rigid virtues of old Rome—rose glowingly before his eyes.
As he entered the Temple gates he came down to earth with a sigh. He was on his way to take his turn of a duty eminently distasteful to him—that of guarding the