“And partly one of us,” replied the Medecin des Pauvres. “You remember poor le Roux, who kept the old baraque where the Council of Ten used to meet? Yonder he lies.”
“Don’t talk of the Council of Ten. What fools and dupes we were made by that vieux gredin, Jean Lebeau! How I wish I could meet him again!”
Gaspard le Noy smiled sarcastically. “So much the worse for you, if you did. A muscular and a ruthless fellow is that Jean Lebeau!” Therewith he turned to the drunken sleeper and woke him up with a shake and a kick. “Armand—Armand Monnier, I say, rise, rub your eyes. What if you are called to your post? What if you are shamed as a deserter and a coward?”
Armand turned, rose with an effort from the recumbent to the sitting posture, and stared dizzily in the face of the Medecin des Pauvres.
“I was dreaming that I had caught by the throat,” said Armand, wildly, “the aristo who shot my brother; and lo, there were two men, Victor de Mauleon and Jean Lebeau.”
“Ah! there is something in dreams,” said the surgeon. “Once in a thousand times a dream comes true.”
CHAPTER V.
The time now came when all provision of food or of fuel failed the modest household of Isaura; and there was not only herself and the Venosta to feed and warm—there were the servants whom they had brought from Italy, and had not the heart now to dismiss to the ‘certainty of famine. True, one of the three, the man, had returned to his native land before the commencement of the siege; but the two women had remained. They supported themselves now as they could on the meagre rations accorded by the Government. Still Isaura attended the ambulance to which she was attached. From the ladies associated with her she could readily have obtained ample supplies: but they had no conception of her real state of destitution; and there was a false pride generally prevalent among the respectable classes, which Isaura shared, that concealed distress lest alms should be proffered.
The destitution of the household had been carefully concealed from the parents of Gustave Rameau, until, one day, Madame Rameau, entering at the hour at which she generally, and her husband sometimes, came for a place by the fireside and a seat at the board, found on the one only ashes, on the other a ration of the black nauseous compound which had become the substitute for bread.