The cold and drizzling rain, which had tended so much to reassure Pétion, had considerably augmented the ill-humor and trouble of these inspectors, whose every meeting resembled preparation for combat, and who, after recognizing each other with looks of defiance, exchanged the word of command slowly and with a very bad grace. One would have said on seeing them separate and return to their several posts, that they mutually feared an attack from behind.
On the same evening, when Paris was a prey to one of these panics (so often renewed that they ought, in some measure, to have become habitual),—the evening on which the massacre of the lukewarm revolutionists was secretly debated, who after having voted (with reservation for the most part) the death of the king, recoiled to-day before the death of the queen, a prisoner in the Temple, with her children and her sister-in-law,—a woman, enveloped in a mantle of lilac printed cotton with black spots, her head almost buried in her hood, glided along the houses in the Rue Saint Honoré, seeking concealment under a door-porch, or in the angle of a wall, every time a patrol appeared, remaining motionless as a statue and holding her breath till he had passed, and once more pursuing her anxious course with increased rapidity, till some danger of a similar nature again compelled her to seek refuge in silence and immobility.
She had already (thanks to the precautions she had taken) travelled over with impunity part of the Rue Saint Honoré, when at the corner of the Rue de Grenelle she suddenly encountered, not a body of patrol, but a small troop of our brave enrolled Volunteers, who, having dined at the Halle-au-Blé, found their patriotism considerably increased by the numerous toasts they had drunk to their future victories. The poor woman uttered a cry, and made a futile attempt to escape by the Rue du Coq.
"Ah, ah, Citizen!" cried the chief of the Volunteers (for already, with the need of command natural to man, these worthy patriots had elected their chief), "Ah, where are you going?"
The fugitive made no reply, but continued her rapid movement.
"What sport!" said the chief; "it is a man disguised, an aristocrat who thinks to save himself."
The sound of two or three guns escaping from hands rather too unsteady to be depended upon, announced to the poor woman that her haste was a fatal mistake.
"No, no," cried she, stopping short, and retracing her steps; "no, Citizen; you are mistaken. I am not a man."
"Then advance at command," said the chief, "and reply to my questions. Where are you hastening to, charming belle of the night?"