"We shall be late in returning," the Vicomte said to the servant who held the carriage door. I had heard—through my thoughts—the stamping of the horses in the courtyard and the rattle of the harness, but took no great note of them, as the Vicomte had the habit of going out in the evening. I noticed we never crossed the river during our silent drive. A river has two sides, just as a street, and one of them is usually in the shade. It was among the shadows that our business lay this evening.
"You know," said the Vicomte, as we climbed the narrow staircase of a quiet house in the neighbourhood of the great wine stores that adjoin the Jardin des Plantes—"you know that this is the day of the talkers—the Rocheforts, the Pyats—the windbags. Mon Dieu, what nonsense! But a windbag may burst and do harm. One must watch these gentry."
Republicanism was indeed in the air at this time. And has not history demonstrated that those who cry loudest for a commonwealth are such as wish to draw from that wealth and add nothing to it? The reddest Republican is always the man who has nothing to lose and all to gain by a social upheaval.
I was not surprised, therefore, when we found ourselves in a room full of bad hats and unkempt heads. A voice was shouting their requirements. I knew that they wanted a wash more than anything else.
The room was a large, low one, and looked larger through an atmosphere blue with smoke and the fumes of absinthe. The Vicomte—a little man, as I have said—slipped in unperceived. I was less fortunate, being of a higher stature. I saw that my advent did not pass unobserved on the platform, where a party of patriots sat in a row, like the Christy Minstrels, showing the soles of their boots to all whom it might concern. In this case a working cobbler would have been deeply interested, as in a vast field of labour. The Vicomte slipped a few yards away from me, and the shoulders of his fellow-countrymen obscured him. I could find no such retreat, for your true Socialist never has much to recommend him to the notice of society, being usually a poor, mean man to look at, who seeks to add a cubit to his stature by encouraging the growth of his hair.
One such stood on the platform, mouthing the bloodthirsty periods of his creed. He caught sight of me.
"Ah!" he cried, "here is a new disciple. And a hardy one! Un grand gaillard, my brethren, who can strike a solid blow for liberty, equality and fraternity. Say, brother, you are with us; is it not so?"
"If you open the casements, not otherwise," I answered. The French crowd is ever ready for blood or laughter. I have seen the Republic completely set in the background by a cat looking in a window and giving voice to the one word assigned to it by nature. Some laughed now, and the orator deemed it wise to leave me in peace. I took advantage of my obscurity to look around me, and was duly edified by what I saw. The Paris vaurien is worth less than any man on earth, and these were choice specimens from the gutter.
We were wasting our time in such a galley, and as I thus reflected a note was slipped into my hand.
"Follow me, but not at once." I read and hid the paper in my pocket. Without staring about me too much, I watched the Vicomte make his way towards a door half hidden by a dirty curtain—another to that by which we had entered. Thither I followed him after a decent interval—no one molesting me. One of the patriots on the platform seemed to watch me with understanding, and when I reached the curtained doorway, my glance meeting his, he dismissed me with his eyelids.