Finally, one day he had told his prisoner, with a wink of the eye:
"Courage, lad! something's going to turn up soon."
The same afternoon Jean heard a distant sound of musketry; then, all in a moment, the door of his cell opened and he saw an avalanche of prisoners roll from one end of the corridor to the other. The gaoler had unlocked all the cells and shouted the words, "Every man for himself; run for it!" Jean himself was carried along, down stairs and passages, out into the prison courtyard, and pitched head foremost against the wall. By the time he recovered from the shock of his fall, the prisoners had vanished, and he stood alone before the open wicket.
Outside in the street he heard the crackle of musketry and saw the Seine running grey under the lowering smoke-cloud of burning Paris. Red uniforms appeared on the Quai de l'École. The Pont-au-Change was thick with fédérés. Not knowing where to fly, he was for going back into the prison; but a body of Vengeurs de Lutèce, in full flight, drove him before their bayonets towards the Pont-au-Change. A woman, a cantinière, kept shouting: "Don't let him go, give him his gruel. He's a Versaillais." The squad halted on the Quai-aux-Fleurs, and Jean was pushed against the wall of the Hôtel-Dieu, the cantinière dancing and gesticulating in front of him. Her hair flying loose under her gold-laced képi, with her ample bosom and her elastic figure poised gallantly on the strong, well-shaped limbs, she had the fierce beauty of some magnificent wild animal. Her little round mouth was wide open, yelling menaces and obscenities, as she brandished a revolver. The Vengeurs de Lutèce, hard-pressed and dispirited, looked stolidly at their white-faced prisoner against the wall, and then looked in each other's faces. Her fury redoubled; threatening them collectively, addressing each man by some vile nickname, pacing in front of them with a bold swing of the powerful hips, the woman dominated them, intoxicated them with her puissant influence.
They formed up in platoon.
"Fire!" cried the cantinière.
Jean threw out his arms before him.
Two or three shots went off. He could hear the balls flatten against the wall, but he was not hit.
"Fire! fire!" The woman repeated the cry in the voice of an angry, self-willed child.
She had been through the fighting, this girl, she had drunk her fill from staved-in wine-casks and slept on the bare ground, pell-mell with the men, out in the public square reddened with the glare of conflagration. They were killing all round her, and nobody had been killed yet for her. She was resolved they should shoot her someone, before the end! Stamping with fury, she reiterated her cry: