“Are you Deputy Lepelletier?” said he.
The diner turned and nodded.
“You have voted in this affair of the king?”
“Mais oui,” said the other—“for death.”
“Scélérat—prends ca!” and with the word he whipped a long blade from under his cloak and passed it into the body of the deputy. I saw the flash and heard the piteous bleat, as also, I swear, the sound of the flesh sucking to the steel.
Février snatched at the murderer, and was spun to the floor like a skittle. I saw startled figures rise, chairs and tables totter, and the one bounding amongst them. He got clear away.
Then, as the mob closed about the fallen, moaning shape, I turned with an instinct of horror to view of my neighbours.
The old gourmet had flung himself back in his chair, his face twisted from the sight; but mademoiselle still picked daintily at her partridge.
CHAPTER III.
THE FOOTPAD.
Early in June of the year ’93 I left Paris in company with M. Crépin. At that time in the flower of his, somewhat mediocre, fortunes, he had been intrusted with a mission which was entirely after his own heart. He was to represent the Executive, in fact, in a “sequestrating” tour through Limosin and Guienne,—or rather through the new-found departments that had deposed those ancient territories,—and his interest had procured me a post as his clerk or assistant. What duties this embraced perhaps the Government would have found it as difficult to specify as their sub-agent; but, after all, Jacques Bonhomme emancipated was excessively conservative in the matter of his retention of the system of complimentary sinecures. For myself, I looked upon my appointment as the simple means to postpone an inevitable denunciation.