The Citizeness Clouet spoke more truly than she knew!
After this event, Jean was sorely perplexed. He talked his trouble over with Mère Clouet who seemed more kindly disposed toward him since the load of debt had been lifted from her shoulders, and her mind had been set at rest about a home for her beloved Yvonne.
"I do not now know how to act," he told her. "My heart is still all for the people and the cause of our Liberty, yet I do truly love the little prince, and even the King and Queen. And I fear from the things I have heard, that the people will sometime do them harm."
"Let your sympathies still be with the people," counselled Mère Clouet wisely. "We are not royalists, and our heads will not be safe should we appear so! But that need not prevent your loyal friendship for these royal ones, only you must keep it very secret. Heaven help us should it be discovered! I pray God that the royalty may be left in peace, or at least be allowed to depart from the country unharmed when the time comes. We may not desire their sway, but we should not menace their personal safety."
"Well, at least," answered Jean, "it will do no harm for me to keep posted as to what the popular intention toward them may be. And for this, I could learn best what I wish at one of the political clubs,—the Cordeliers or the Jacobins. But none except the initiated are allowed to enter. However, I'm going to watch my chance and try!" True to this resolve, he informed Mère Clouet one evening:
"I shall go to the Rue St. Honoré to-night and linger near the Jacobin Club. We shall see what we shall see!" And he was off before she could even protest at the lateness of the hour.
The way from the Rue de Lille to the Rue St. Honoré was not long, but it was varied by sights and sounds only to be witnessed in Paris during one of her revolutions. More than once Jean caught the infection from some shouting group, and snatching outstretched hands, joined in the wild dance of the Carmagnole. Then again he would pause before a gesticulating orator madly haranguing his audience from a bench or improvised platform. The air was filled with shouts of "Vive la Nation!" "Vive Danton!" "A bas le Roi!" Jean drank it all in, his boyish bosom filled with pride at the thought of this strange, new liberty. Yet at the cry, "Down with the King!" his heart would grow sick with the menace that it carried for his benefactors.
At last he reached the Rue St. Honoré and stood before the great stone building, so long the peaceful retreat of the Dominican Monks, now given over to the strongest political society of the day,—the Jacobin Club. Men were passing through its well-guarded doorway, each separately interviewed for a moment by a crabbed, ill-disposed doorkeeper. Each as he passed this watchful sentinel, exhibited a card or murmured some magic password. Jean possessed neither a card nor the knowledge of the proper watchword, but he was not to be daunted by either lack. Boldly he marched up the steps, and would have walked straight into the hall, had not the doorkeeper seized him wrathfully by the collar. No one else was passing in at that moment.
"Impudent! What is your business here?" he shouted.