“Ah, Madame, if I remember! Was I not at the wedding in the Minster? Ma foi! what silk, what satin—and the gold of the officers. Of course, I shall be his friend. You will sleep to-night and say, ‘She is watching him.’ I have loved myself, Madame—even I, Jeannette.”
Again the scarlet flush dyed the pretty cheeks, and the heart of the girl beat fast.
“He is my kinsman,” she said earnestly; “his friends do not wish him to be in Strasburg. I count upon you to help him. We shall not forget your kindness. And my husband will come here himself when he returns from Ulm.”
Jeannette stood with eyes wide open. The romance of her guest was gone, then. In a sense the truth was unpleasant to her. And yet, after all, she had no rival in the house. When she mounted the quaking stairs again, she went gladly and singing. The English stranger was very handsome. He should not want a friend there.
Beatrix left the house quickly, almost furtively. The errand she had set herself was an errand of life or death. The drunken troopers in the tavern stood to her for so many savage jailors of the lonely man in the garret above. The noises in the streets echoed as the cries of the doomed in a stricken city. Strange lights flared in the sky. She heard men say that they were lights of the houses which burned by the northern gates. The low booming of the artillery was incessant. It acted upon men’s nerves as an irritant, moving them to frenzies of rage and despair. By here and there the chink of a cellar door showed her whole families, accustomed yesterday to the common luxuries of life, now huddled together on a bed of straw for very terror of the falling death. Others were heaping up bags full of clay before the shutters of the shops. In the Broglie itself a man ran to and fro crying out to all that they had killed his son. He took her by the arm roughly and would have told her his story; but she tore herself away and heard the laughter of the maids of a great house, who had watched the man and found amusement in his distress. Some way further on, a child played with a paper lantern and a little tin sword while a company of half-drunken artillerymen drilled him incoherently. The men shouted after her to come and see the new Governor, who was going to open the gates to the Prussians.
She passed them by quickly, and turned into the square by the New Church. There were a great many soldiers here, both officers and privates, and they stood to watch a looming crimson cloud which quivered as with the iridescence of tremulous flame, and cast back upon the houses a golden wave of fantastic lights that showed her even the faces of the men who were gathered there. Amongst them she distinguished Gatelet, in his uniform of the National Guard. He recognised her at once, and crossed the road to speak to her. She knew that she trembled as he came, but she answered him quite frankly.
“I was coming to the Place Kleber to call upon you to-night,” he said in a low voice; “of course, you have been to see him. They told me so when I called just now.”
She looked up quickly. The man had followed her from the tavern, then—had watched, she thought, while she was in the room.
“Yes,” she responded with an effort; “I went there, Monsieur. Brandon was always our friend, I am under the greatest obligations to him, as is my husband—”
He made a little gesture as though the explanation was entirely supererogatory.