"Bread?"
"Meat?"
The scouts always denied success. Then a chorus arose:
"She's hiding it!"
"Show us your basket!"
"Eh, and under your dress!"
Once, in the Rue St. Honoré, a slip of a girl had almost freed herself of the questioning crowd, when a lean dog with a sharp nose bounded, sniffing, to her side. There was a quick turning in the crowd, and the nearest woman, leaping to her feet, shouted hysterically:
"I smell dried fish!"
The next moment, up the street a scuttling speck fled before a frenzied cloud from which shot out white arms and grasping hands.
Through such mad scenes of famine, Nicole arrived at the Hall of the Convention; where, being early, she entered the Tuileries to await the arrival of Barabant.