CHAPTER XIII
THE TENTH THERMIDOR
It would be impossible to describe the meeting between Jean and his loved ones on that memorable night. To Mère Clouet and Yvonne it seemed as though he had actually risen from the dead. For months they had received absolutely no news of him, or his fate. Yvonne confided to him that Mère Clouet had even gone to witness the daily executions at such times as she felt she could be away from necessary work, though the sight of them nearly killed her. But it seemed the only way in which she could learn whether the boy had yet been doomed to perish. As her work, however, compelled her to miss many days, she could never be certain that he had not been executed in her absence.
For several days Jean remained securely hidden. It would have been far from safe for him to show his face out of doors, for his enemy, La Souris, was still very active. So he stayed indoors, played with Moufflet, and asked incessant questions about the long period of his imprisonment, striving to learn every detail of what had occurred in his absence.
While he was thus in hiding, Paris was full of strange mutterings and subdued excitement. People conversed in undertones in the streets, gesticulated freely and had heated arguments. Detachments of soldiers were stationed in every quarter, and an uprising of some kind was plainly expected. Jean remembered the words of the Baron de Batz, and scented trouble but could make little of what he slyly witnessed from the windows. In fact, people seemed themselves scarcely to comprehend the true cause of all this ferment. Naturally the unrest communicated itself to Mère Clouet and the children. Yvonne begged to be allowed to go out and investigate but Mère Clouet and Jean would not hear of this. At last, on the afternoon of July twenty-eighth, Mère Clouet herself could no longer contain her curiosity.
"I am going out myself!" she announced. "I at least will be safe in the streets, and something unusual is happening to-day. Rest you here! I will come back shortly, and tell you all about it!" And she hurried away.
Now it must be explained that France, from the time of September, 1792, had determined to change the names of all the months, and number the years beginning from her birth as a Republic. Consequently this day of July 28, 1794, or the Tenth Thermidor, year II, as she called it, was destined to be a date long remembered in history.
In about two hours Mère Clouet came back. She was breathless, her eyes were flashing, and she was under the influence of some keen excitement.
"My soul!" she exclaimed, sinking into a seat "What I have seen! What I have heard! What times we live in! You will scarcely believe me! I went to the Rue St. Honoré. It was filled with a shouting crowd. I asked a woman what was happening, and she looked at me as though she thought me insane for not knowing! 'Where have you been?' she cried. 'What! do you not know that Robespierre was yesterday condemned by the Convention for his barbarity, declared an outlaw, and naturally headed for the scaffold? Coward that he is! He tried to kill himself, but missed his aim and only wounded his jaw. He's on the way to the guillotine now, with a few others of a similar stripe,—Couthon, Henriot, St. Just! Curse him! Curse him! He put to death my husband and my father for no crime at all,—they were good Republicans! And Barras,—he's in command of all the forces of Paris, and will soon be at the head of the government, also. He is at least a humane man! Ah, here comes the tumbril now!'
"Then a mighty roar went up from the crowd, a cart jolted up the street, and there sat that Robespierre, his hands tied behind him, and his wicked face bound up in a rag! Faugh! the sight turned me sick! But here's something else quite as wonderful! Directly beside him, cheek by jowl, sat (you'll never believe me!) that ruffian Simon the cobbler, in the very Carmagnole suit he used to wear in the Temple. His teeth fairly chattered with fright! Ah, but I wish the little fellow could have seen him! Was ever a punishment so well deserved!