‘Pray unceasingly, my dear child—pray with your whole heart, as though it were for one you loved best in the world. I shall not return, perhaps, till late to-night; but I will kiss you then, and to-morrow we shall go into the woods together.’
The tears fell from his cheek to mine as he said this, and his damp hand trembled as he pressed my fingers. My heart was full to bursting at his emotion, and I resolved faithfully to do his bidding. To watch him as he went, I opened the sash, and as I did so, the sound of a distant drum, the well-known muffled roll, floated on the air, and I remembered it was the day of the guillotine—that day in which my feverish spirit turned, as it were in relief, to the reality of blood. Remote as was the part of the city we lived in, I could still mark the hastening steps of the foot-passengers, as they listened to the far-off summons, and see the tide was setting towards the fatal Place de Grève. It was a lowering, heavy morning, overcast with clouds, and on its loaded atmosphere sounds moved slowly and indistinctly; yet I could trace through all the din of the great city, the incessant roll of the drums, and the loud shouts that burst forth, from time to time, from some great multitude.
Forgetting everything save my intense passion for scenes of terror, I hastened down the stairs into the street, and at the top of my speed hurried to the place of execution. As I went along, the crowded streets and thronged avenues told of some event of more than common interest; and in the words which fell from those around me, I could trace that some deep Royalist plot had just been discovered, and that the conspirators would all on that day be executed. Whether it was that the frequent sight of blood was beginning to pall upon the popular appetite, or that these wholesale massacres interested less than the sight of individual suffering, I know not; but certainly there was less of exultation, less of triumphant scorn in the tone of the speakers. They talked of the coming event as of a common occurrence, which, from mere repetition, was gradually losing interest.
‘I thought we had done with these Chouans,’ said a man in a blouse, with a paper cap on his head. ‘Pardie! they must have been more numerous than we ever suspected.’
‘That they were, citizen,’ said a haggard-looking fellow, whose features showed the signs of recent strife; ‘they were the millions who gorged and fed upon us for centuries—who sipped the red grape of Bordeaux, while you and I drank the water of the Seine.’
‘Well, their time is come now,’ cried a third.
‘And when will ours come?’ asked a fresh-looking, dark-eyed girl, whose dress bespoke her trade as a flower-girl, ‘or do you call this our time, my masters, when Paris has no more pleasant sight than blood, nor any music save the “Ça ira” that drowns the cries of the guillotine? Is this our time, when we have lost those who gave us bread, and got in their place only those who would feed us with carnage?’
‘Down with her! down with the Chouane! à bas la Royaliste!’ cried the pale-faced fellow; and he struck the girl with his fist upon her face, and left it covered with blood.
‘To the Lantern with her—to the Seine!’ shouted several voices; and now, rudely seizing her by the shoulders, the mob seemed bent upon sudden vengeance; while the poor girl, letting fall her basket, begged with clasped hands for mercy.
‘See here, see here, comrades,’ cried a fellow, stooping down among the flowers, ‘she is a Royalist: here are lilies hid beneath the rest.’