"My dear Charles," replied his wife, "you do not know the Parisians very well. An English aristocrat to them is any Englishman who is outside his own country for pleasure and with his pocket well lined with guineas. Doubtless, however, this is some needy ragamuffin or copper captain, who has come to the scaffold for his sins, and they suppose him an aristocrat."
Whatever Sir Charles may have replied was drowned now by an increase of the howls and yells of the crowd, by fiercer beatings on the tambours-de-basque and tabours, by snatches of wild, frenzied songs, and by bursts of hysterical laughter.
The Place de Grève was in sight.
"Turn off!" said Sir Charles, putting his head out of the window and addressing the coachman--"turn off, I say! I told you to leave the route to that infernal Place and avoid it. Why have you disobeyed me?"
The man shrugged his shoulders as he looked round from his seat--doubtless, in spite of the orders he had received, he meant to see le spectacle himself if possible--then he said:
"Monsieur, it is impossible to turn off, or scarcely now to proceed. The crowd encompasses us. Yet the Place is not so full but we may pass through it. Mon Dieu! if it had been a fine May morning, a fly could not have passed."
"Is--is there anything--dreadful--taking place yet? If so, we will not proceed."
The driver stood up on his box and gazed forward; then he shook his head and said:
"Non, monsieur, there is nothing. Only the erection itself, and the soldiers and people; not many of the latter, either. Nous autres," pointing to the howling crowd from the Bal Masqué seething around them, "will double the sightseers." But he muttered to himself, "Ere we get into the middle of the Place we shall see something, or I'm a stupid escargot."
"Go on, then," said Sir Charles, "as quickly as you can, since you cannot now turn round. Lose no time." And he spoke to his companions, saying, "Best put on your masks. This is no place for ladies to be seen in. But we shall be through it all in five minutes."