CHAPTER II. THE RESTAURANT ‘AU SCELERAT’
As I gained the street, at a distance from the Place, I was able to increase my speed; and I did so with an eagerness as if the world depended on my haste. At any other time I would have bethought me of my disobedience to the père’s commands, and looked forward to meeting him with shame and sorrow, but now I felt a kind of importance in the charge intrusted to me. I regarded my mission as something superior to any petty consideration of self, while the very proximity in which I had stood to peril and death made me seem a hero in my own eyes.
At last I reached the street where we lived, and, almost breathless with exertion, gained the door. What was my amazement, however, to find it guarded by a sentry, a large, solemn-looking fellow, with a tattered cocked-hat on his head, and a pair of worn striped trousers on his legs, who cried out, as I appeared, ‘Halte-là!’ in a voice that at once arrested my steps.
‘Where to, youngster?’ said he, in a somewhat melted tone, seeing the shock his first words had caused me.
‘I am going home, sir,’ said I submissively; ‘I live at the third storey, in the apartment of the Père Michel.’
‘The Père Michel will live there no longer, my boy; his apartment is now in the Temple,’ said he slowly.
‘In the Temple!’ said I, whose memory at once recalled my father’s fate; and then, unable to control my feelings, I sat down upon the steps and burst into tears.
‘There, there, child, you must not cry thus,’ said he; ‘these are not days when one should weep over misfortunes; they come too fast and too thick on all of us for that. The père was your tutor, I suppose?’
I nodded.
‘And your father—where is he?’