What was I to do?—what warning to give? This child—this frail wind-flower of the night—the guillotine would have devoured her at a snap, and laughed over the tit-bit! But I, and the nameless gluttons of the ditch!
They were there—part at least of one of those packs (recruited by gradual degrees from the desolated homes of the proscribed—of émigrés) that now were swollen to such formidable proportions as to have become a menace and a nightly terror. The dogs were there, and should they scent this tender quarry, what power was in a single faithful hound to defend her against a half hundred, perhaps, of her fellows.
Sweating with apprehension, I stole down the steps. She was even then preparing to retreat hurriedly as she had come. Her lips were pressed to the beast’s wrinkled head. The sound of her footstep might have precipitated the catastrophe I dreaded.
“Citoyenne! citoyenne!” I whispered in an anguished voice.
She looked up, scared and white in a moment. The dog gave a rolling growl.
“Radegonde!” she murmured, in a faint warning tone.
The brute stood alert, her hair bristling.
“Bid her away!” I entreated. “You are in danger.”
She neither answered nor moved.
“See, I am in earnest!” I cried, loud as I durst. “The wild dogs are below there.”