Still, not a soul seemed to be abroad. As I trod the fateful quarter ten minutes earlier, the last squalid roysterers had staggered from the wine-shops—the last gleams of light been shut upon the emptied streets. I was alone with the dogs and the guillotine.
Tiptoeing very gently, very softly, I was preparing to descend the steps once more, when I drew back with a muttered exclamation, and stood staring down upon an apparition that, speeding at that moment into the Place, paused within ten paces of the scaffold on which I stood.
Above the scudding clouds was a moon that pulsed a weak intermittent radiance through the worn places of the drift. Its light was always more suggested than revealed; but it was sufficient to denote that the apparition was that of a very pale young woman—a simple child she looked, whose eyes, nevertheless, wore that common expression of the dramatic intensity of her times.
She stood an instant, tense as Corday, her fingers bent to her lips; her background a frouzy wall with the legend Propriété Nationale scrawled on it in white chalk. Significant to the inference, the cap of scarlet wool was drawn down upon her young blondes curls—the gold of the coveted perukes.
Suddenly she made a little movement, and in the same instant gave out a whistle clear and soft.
Yes, it was she from whom it proceeded; and I shuddered. There below me in the ditch were the dogs; here before me was this fearless child.
For myself, even in the presence of this angel, I dared scarcely stir. It was unnatural; it was preposterous—came a scramble and a rush; and there, issued from the filthy sewer, was a huge boar-hound, that fawned on the little citoyenne, and yelped (under her breath) like a thing of human understanding.
She cried softly, “Down, Radegonde!” and patted the monster’s head with a pretty manner of endearment.
“Ah!” she murmured, “hast thou broken thy faith with thy hunger? Traitor!—but I will ask no questions. Here are thy comfits. My sweet, remember thy pedigree and thy mistress.”
She thrust a handful of sugar-plums into the great jaws. I could hear the hound crunching them in her teeth.