"Citizen Toulan," said she, "I will keep this cigar as a remembrancer of this hour, and if you ever smoke here again, I shall show it to you."
"I should like to see this Austrian woman doubting the word of a sans-culottes," cried Simon.
"And I too, Simon," replied Toulan, going back into the anteroom. "We will teach her that she must trust our word. You see that I am a good teacher."
"An excellent one," cried Simon; "I must compliment you on it, citizen. But if you have no objections, we will play a game or two of cards with the citizens here."
"All right," replied Toulan. "But I hope you have got the new kind of cards, which have no kings and queens on them. For, I tell you, I do not play with the villanous old kind."
"Nor I," chimed in Lepitre. "It makes me mad to see the old stupids with their crowns on that are on the old kind of cards."
"You are a pair of out-and-out republicans," said Simon, admiringly. "Truly, one might learn of you how a sans-culottes ought to bear himself."
"Well, you can calm yourselves about these, brothers," said one of the officials; "we have no tyrant-cards—we have the new cards of the republic. See there! instead of the king, there is a sans- culottes; instead of the queen, we have a 'knitter,' [Footnote: The market-women and hucksters had the privilege of claiming the first seats on the spectators' platform, near the guillotine. They sat there during the executions, knitting busily on long stockings, while looking at the bloody drama before them. Every time that a head was cut off and dropped into the basket beneath the knife, the women made a mark in their knitting-work, and thus converted their stockings into a kind of calendar, which recorded the number of persons executed. From this circumstance the market-women received the name of "knitters.">[ and for the jack, we have a Swiss soldier, for they were the menials of the old monarchy." [Footnote: Historical.-See "Memoires de la Marquise de Crequi," vol. III.]
"That is good; well, we will play then," cried Toulan, with an air of good-humor.
They all took their places at the table, while the queen took up the sewing on which the princesses had been engaged before.