“Yes, a long way.”
“A fine city, Paris,” said the other, pulling on his gloves.
“Fine, indeed, Monsieur.”
They took their seats, and the coach started with a noisy effort. The elder traveller was soon asleep again, but Luc sat awake, alert, watching the blurred misty glass turn a cold white as the dawn came slowly.
CHAPTER VI
THE GARRET
When Luc looked from the window of his room across the Isle of St. Louis he realized the great gulf he had set between himself and his past.
The chamber was high up in a tall, straight-fronted house that had once been of some pretensions to splendour, and a man with good vision could have seen a strange array of twisted roofs and chimney-stacks beneath the two dominant towers of Notre-Dame de Paris; and even Luc’s ruined sight could discern a vast, if blurred, sweep of houses, sky, and clouds.
Looking down into the street, he could dimly see the dirty house-fronts; the kennels with their up-piled garbage; the poor wine-shop; the people between poverty and draggled fashion, who came and went in this heart of the city that was now so decayed, yet retained still some remnants of splendour; a certain air of being old and royal; a certain pretence of being prosperous and refined; a poor enough pretence, and one fast wearing thin, still there, and sometimes, as on Sundays, when the small lawyers and men of letters with their ladies walked abroad, worn jauntily enough.
Newly polished swords, newly powdered wigs, gold lace, and hooped petticoats would then grace the rambling streets. Sedan-chairs would cross the cobbles, and sometimes a great man would dash past in a coach and four to one of the hotels the Isle still boasted, where the wit and learning of France gathered occasionally.
Often though, too, this romantic and brave pretence would be abandoned, and the truth stick through, like sharp elbows through a threadbare coat. And bitter penury, and coarse licence, and desperate lawlessness showed openly enough in the narrow streets; and starved faces would be common enough for those who liked to count them, and rebellious talk common enough for those who cared to listen; and people at squalid doorways would curse the war, and taxes, and sometimes the nobles. Even the King did not seem so beloved in these dark streets as he was at Versailles. But the priests, and the tax-gatherers, and the little officials had the people well in hand, and Luc had seen them go, obediently enough, to the church to celebrate a victory—and victories came plentifully.