I thanked her for her request as if it had been a favour. And, indeed, it was so to be regarded, and of a quality so inestimable that an upright man could scarcely be honoured by a greater.
“Well enough I knew that you would not refuse!” exclaimed Madame Berthemet, embracing me. “But this is not all,” she added. “You will need to procure a second witness; they demand that two shall come forward if my brother is to be released. Oh, my friend, what times we are living in! Monsieur de St. Ange keeps aloof from us; our misfortunes embarrass him; and Monsieur Mille would be afraid to visit folks under suspicion. Who would have thought it, my friend—who would have thought it? Do you remember Federation Day? We were all brimful of enthusiasm about fraternity, and I had on a very becoming dress.”
She was in tears when she left me. I descended the stairs almost immediately after her to go in search of a guarantor, and to tell the truth I was considerably puzzled to put my hands on one. As I bowed my head in my hands I realized that I had a beard of eight days' growth, which might render me an object of suspicion; so I betook myself at once to my barber’s at the corner of the Rue St. Guillaume. This barber was a very worthy fellow named Larisse, as tall as a poplar and as restless as an aspen. When I entered his shop he was attending to a wine merchant of the neighbourhood, who with his face smothered in lather was pouring out all sorts of playful threats.
“Ah, my fine fellow, you dandifier of fine ladies,” he was saying, “your head will be cut off and stuck on the end of a pike to gratify your aristocratic inclinations. Every enemy of the people must add his quota to the basket,[[20]] from the fat Capet to the slim Larisse. And, ça ira, so it will be!”
[20]. The basket into which the heads of the guillotined fell. (Trans.)
Monsieur Larisse, paler than moonshine and fluttering like a leaf, observed the utmost precautions as he shaved the chin of the abusive patriot. I can affirm that never did barber experience greater terror. And from this circumstance I drew a happy augury for the success of the design I had suddenly conceived. It was my intention, to be plain, to ask Monsieur Larisse to accompany me before the committee as the second guarantor.
“He is such a coward,” I reflected, “that he will never dare to protest.”