Cramoisin took up the cry.
"He who pities an enemy of the Nation is a traitor. Arrest him!"
Boudgoust and Jambony, joining in, shouted:
"Arrest him! Arrest him!"
In the abject crowd, terrified by these four men, a murmur, a muttering, a rumble, circulated, which it waited to convert into either protest or approval as Javogues should pronounce.
As the Marseillais unwillingly approached, Nicole, dragging Barabant back, whispered in his ear that eternal cry of woman:
"Save thyself. Thy life belongs to me."
"Citoyen Barabant," Javogues said sternly, "did you greet this man as a Girondin?"
"I greeted him," Barabant said slowly, "as a man who has done me kindnesses in the past."
Before this allusion to his own indebtedness Javogues hesitated, but the cries of the crowd urged him on.