Crépin and I had by then ceased to fraternise. I could never quite learn to adapt my sympathies to a certain mauvais ton that underlay in him all the sensitiveness of the voluptuary. Also, perhaps, I was beginning a little to resent the humourless methods of a destiny that had not the wit, it seemed, to rebuke my innate luxuriousness but by affecting a concern to accommodate me with house-fellows of my own kidney. We parted on the best of terms; and he none the less attended to my interests and, as far as possible, to my safety. To the end, I think, he retained an admiration for the superior quality of my epigastrium; and when his opportunity came to do me a service, he never failed to remind me of his indebtedness to my fastidious gourmandise.
We left the city, travelling en roi, on a fine blowing afternoon. We had our roomy carriage, with four well-blooded horses, and a postilion to each pair. An escort of four patriots, moreover, mounted, armed, and generally drunk, accompanied us to enforce the letter of the law. We went out by the suburb of Passy, starting from the Pavillon-Liberté, close by the Thuilleries,—where Crépin received his papers of administration—and whipping along the river-bank by way of the Port aux Pierres. Close by the gates the carriage gave a thudding jolt, and drew up suddenly to an accompaniment of noise like the screaming of a swollen axle.
I started up in my corner.
“What is it?” I exclaimed; but three men, risen at that moment from a bench under some chestnut-trees, engaged my surprised attention. They made at the postilions, it seemed, and the face of him that was foremost twitched with a rage of nervous resentment. Their hats had been laid beside them in the shade, and I noticed that as this individual sprang to his feet, the powder leapt from his head as if a musket-ball had struck it. For he was very sprucely groomed, every hair currycombed to run parallel with its fellows; and there was a fastidious neatness about his appearance that was like the peevish delicacy of an invalid.
Such, indeed, he was, from more than one point of view; for he was no other than M. Robespierre himself, dressed in the fine blue coat he was studying to make historical, and exhibiting the weak extremes of his nature in presence of a run-over dog.
“But this is infamous!” I heard him shrill, in a strained wavering voice. “Thus to shock our humanity and our nerves!”
He ran to the carriage window in uncontrollable excitement. He bustled with his shaking speech so that it was hardly audible.
“What mischief produces itself that you tear through the streets like brigands? Messieurs—messieurs! but I say you have no right—citizens, do you hear?”
Crépin, dismayed, muttered something about authority. The other snapped at the word and worried it.
“Authority! there is none in this city to be careless of innocent lives. Authority! who excuses himself to me—to the Republic—by assuming a licence to murder under its ægis,—yes, murder, I say? You would adopt the prerogatives of aristocrats—you are an aristocrat—Tachereau! St Just!”