This speech was uttered by a poorly-clad man, with a red cap on his head, as Gerald was endeavouring to pierce the crowd.
‘Who is the citizen who has this privilege of speaking with Gabriel Riquetti?’ said Cabrot, an over-dressed man, who stood the centre of a group of talkers.
Without paying any attention to this summons, Gerald tried to pursue his way and pass on; but several already barred the passage, and seemed to insist, as on a right, to hear the last account of the sick man. For a moment a haughty impulse to refuse all information thus demanded seemed to sway Gerald; then, suddenly changing his resolution, he calmly answered that Mirabeau appeared to him so ill as to preclude all hope of recovery, and that his state portended but few hours of life.
‘Ask him who he himself is?’—‘Why and how he came there?’—‘What medicine is Riquetti taking?’—‘Who administers it?’—‘Let this man give an account of himself!’ Such, and such like, were the cries that now resounded on all sides, and Gerald saw himself at once surrounded by a mob, whose demands were uttered in no doubtful tone.
‘The Citizen Riquetti is one whose life is dear to the Republic,’ broke in Cabrot; ‘all Frenchmen have a right to investigate whatever affects that life. Some aver that he is the victim of assassination——’
‘I say, and will maintain it, broke in the man who had made this assertion before; ‘they have given him some stuff that causes a gradual decay.’
‘Let this man declare himself. Who are you, Citizen, and whence?’ asked another, confronting Fitzgerald. ‘What business came you here to transact with the Citizen Riquetti?’
‘Have I asked you, or you or you,’ said Gerald, turning proudly from one to the other of those around him, ‘of your private affairs? Have I dared to interrogate you as to who you are, whence you came, whither you go? and by what presumption do you take this liberty with me?’
‘By that which a care of the public safety imposes,’ said Cabrot. ‘As Commissary of the fifth “arrondissement,” I demand this citizen’s name.’
‘You are right to be boastful of your liberty!’ said Gerald insolently, ‘when a man cannot walk the streets, nor even visit a dying friend, without submitting himself to the treatment of a criminal.’