Billet did not let the rampart of flame stop him: but urged Maggie through smoke and fire. She bravely burst through the incandescent barrier; but on the other side was a compact crowd stretching from the outer town to the heart of the city, some singing, some shouting:
"To arms!"
Billet looked what he was, a good farmer coming to town on his business. Perhaps he roared "Make way there!" too roughly, but Pitou tempered it with so polite a "Make way, if you please!" that one appeal corrected the other. Nobody had any interest in staying Billet in attending to his business and they let him go through.
Maggie had recovered her strength from the fire having singed her hide and all this unusual clamor worried her. Billet was obliged to hold her in now, in the fear of crushing the idlers classed before the town gate and the others who were as curiously running from the gates to the bars.
Somehow or other they pushed on, till they reached the boulevard, where they were forced to stop.
A procession was marching from the Bastile to the Royal Furniture Stores, the two stone knots binding the enclosure of Paris to its girth. This broad column followed a funeral barrow on which were placed two busts, one covered with crape, the other with flowers; the one in mourning was Necker's, the Prime Minister and eminently the Treasurer, dismissed but not disgraced; the flower-crowned bust was the Duke of Orleans', who had openly taken the Swiss financier's part.
Billet, asking, learned that this was popular homage to the banker and his defender.
The farmer was born in a country where the Orleans family had been venerated for a century and more. He belonged to the Philosophical sect and consequently regarded Necker not only as a great minister but an apostle of humanity.
There was ample to fire him. He jumped off his horse without clearly knowing what he was about and mingled with the throng, yelling:
"Long live the Duke of Orleans! Necker forever!"