IV.—Seditious Placards.
One evening Jacques slunk like a thief up the stairs of his house and entered his room furtively. He was pale, his face contorted, his eyes haggard; and it was with a panting voice he called Marianne.
"I am pursued," he said; "I have come to let you know and to share what money you have—for I must escape."
She threw herself upon his neck.
"What is it you have done?"
"Oh! a mere nothing: posted up some bills on the walls; they say these placards are seditious."
"And you are being pursued?"
"Yes, they are trying to arrest me. I'm not afraid of a prison, but I don't fancy being made to pay for others."
"Yet that is all you will do, Jacques; for you are weak-minded, and allow yourself to be led away."
"They say it is revolutionary."
"Yes, and they will make an insurgent of you. They will push you on to fight behind a barricade; they will get themselves made Deputies or Ministers, and leave you to be put in irons and sent to die five thousand leagues away, if you are not shot against a wall. It is wrong of you, Jacques, to have allowed yourself to be led into this position; women see further than you—because they are mothers."
All the while she was weeping and talking she was hurriedly making up a bundle of clothes. Then kissing Jacques—holding him in a long embrace—she placed two five-franc pieces in his hand, perhaps the only two left in the house.
"Don't go yet," she said; "I want you to see the children."
But sounds were heard on the stairs—the whisperings of men stealthily ascending.
"The police!" cried Houdaille. "Oh, the brutes!—Adieu! I have no time to lose. Don't be afraid—they won't take me!"
"STRIKING OUT WITH HIS FISTS,"
He opened the door suddenly and darted down the stairs, striking out with his fists, and with such whirling rapidity, that the poor fellows in pursuit of him had nothing but their pains for their labour in the long and fruitless chase which followed.
Marianne breathed again—he was saved. Saved, yes—but what was to become of him?
During the greater part of the night she stood with her face pressing the windowpane, shuddering at the slightest sound made without, expecting every moment to see him re-appear. For an instant a cold perspiration burst out upon her forehead; it was a troop of soldiers, a whole battalion of infantry, the commander at its head, passing under her windows, and when the sound of their feet had died away into the icy silence of the night, it was the turn of cavalry, the iron hoofs of the horses clattering upon the frosted pavement in the moonlight. It was part of a regiment of dragoons, with down-bent heads, enveloped in their grey cloaks and sabre in hand.