“A week from to-day, if all goes well, you and the others will be with your mother in, or rather near, Calais. Your sister, the governess, the Du Monde and Proté are there now. I saw Champar this morning and he told me where to find them. I hope that a fishing schooner will take you all to England. I spoke to your mother through the door for a moment this morning. She has been told that her children are to join her in Calais, and she thinks that you are already on your way. Henri has given her that impression. He has given her, for a disguise, the clothes of his sister who was to have gone to a cousin in the country, and for whom he has procured a passport. She is not able to leave, and your mother will go in her stead. Her passport is in order. When she leaves you at the garden gate she is to go at once to the Place de la Bastille and has orders what else to do. Little Mademoiselle, this is hard—she must not know that it is her own Marie Josephine who is saving her! Safety for you all lies in her not knowing this, for she would not leave the city if she thought that one of you were here!”
Marie Josephine thought of all that Dian had said, a little later, as she sat on a secluded bench in the great entrance hall of Great-aunt Hortense’s house. All about her were emblems of the revolution. She would have laughed out loud at the thought of Great-aunt Hortense’s horror if she had not been too excited and tremulous to laugh at anything. A tri-color banner was draped over the entrance to the grand salon. At the carved oak table in the center of the hall sat three men wearing red caps, and all down the dusky corridors other red caps bobbed up and down as citizens walked to and fro debating and wrangling. From an anteroom, a cold, gilded apartment, came a jangle of voices. A meeting of one of the sections was taking place there. All through the city were clubs or sections, each composed of men with different ideas from the others, no two ever agreeing on anything except to advocate bloodshed and to show no mercy.
Marie had put her tray with its jug of licorice water and its jangling cups on the floor beside her. Vivi had left it for her at the stand of a nut seller near the Marquise du Ganne’s house. All sorts of booths and stands had sprung up overnight in the once fashionable parts of Paris.
Dian would be waiting for Madame Saint Frère, in her disguise as Henri’s sister, in the Place de la Bastille. Henri had already been gone some hours with his regiment. Marie Josephine was to seize her opportunity to slide through the shadowy halls, up the back stairs to the room at the end of the hall. Her heart beat so fast that it seemed as though some one must hear it. She saw that it was not going to be an easy thing to slip away, and she made up her mind that she must not, under any circumstance, let any chance go by. Some men came up to her and demanded a drink. She stooped over for her tray and stood up.
She did not feel as though it were herself at all who poured the sickish-looking, grey mixture into the tin cups and received in exchange coins which she put in the pocket of her torn skirt. She was careful not to speak any more than she could help, for fear that her voice would betray her. She could look like Vivi, and instinct seemed to tell her how to be like her, but she was afraid of her voice.
As she walked about among the crowd, through the old familiar halls, selling her wares, she remembered what Dian had said: “Have no fear. Fear is nothing and it cannot talk to you or keep you from doing what is right. It has no power!” She remembered something else that he had said: “You are so changed. It will be easy, indeed, for your mother not to think of you at all, except as a part of her rescue. Shake your hair well over your face and do not look directly at her more than you can help. Remember she thinks that you are near Calais!”
Dian had given her the two keys. She could feel them jingling together in her inner pocket. She wanted to put her tray down somewhere so that she could slip away more easily at the right moment. She waited until there was a lull in the demand for licorice water, then quietly slipped over to a corner and ducked her head from under the leather strap which held the tray about her neck. As she put the tray down on the floor and turned away some one called to her. It was Georges Fardou, the man who had let Vivi through the gates to “Pick a flower.” He looked like a big, shadowy giant as he stood there in the dark hall.
“Come, give us a dance like the one at the West Barricade. The 'Ça Ira,’ or anything that’s full of go!” he called with a laugh.
The “Ça Ira.” She had heard it sung in the streets that very morning as she had come through the rue Royale with Dian. She had seen it danced, too, a wild, strange weaving in and out of dreadful people. She had shut her eyes at Dian’s bidding and held tight to his hand, and he had talked to her in his quiet way of Pigeon Valley, as they walked through the city.
“I’ll do another one to-day,” she heard herself saying, and it seemed as though she spoke harshly without trying, her mouth was so dry.