"Good—discretion!"
Barabant, determined to shift the inquiry, demanded point-blank:
"What were you doing in a café of aristocrats?"
"What were you?" Dossonville retorted. "There are many ways to serve the Revolution besides proclaiming it from the tops of tables. Leave me my ways. Do you think if I were an aristocrat I'd have taken the pains to save you? Come, young man, don't turn your back on opportunities. Swallow your pride and confess that there are not many more meals in sight."
"I am but a day in Paris," Barabant answered; and then, lest he should seem to have relented: "there are a hundred ways to find a living."
"Can you write? Have you written pamphlets?" Dossonville persisted. "What would you say to a chance to see that fine eloquence caught in black and white and circulating in the streets?"
Barabant's face flushed with such a sudden delight that the other laughingly drew his arm into his and exclaimed:
"Come, I see how it is. Camille Desmoulins is only twenty-nine. It is the age for the youngsters. Only—" He stopped suddenly. "There are many degrees of Republicans nowadays. Does your eloquence run in the line of our valiant radical Marat, or Danton and Desmoulins, or are we of the school of Condorcet and Roland?"
"I am Girondin," Barabant answered.