"Why do you want to know?" growled Goursac. "Whom are you going to meet?"
"The old doctor, of course," she answered, laughing as she escaped.
As she passed in front, the ragamuffin was still roaring the news.
"Heavens, Jambony," she cried, "there is no need to let the foreigners know what is taking place!"
"Citoyenne, you exaggerate," the carriage-crier answered; "I am only whispering."
"Then, my dear Jambony, just think your thoughts. I am sure they will be loud enough!"
In great good humor, she began to work her way in the direction of the wrecked Bastille, and perhaps from the very elevation of her spirits, good luck quickly emptied her basket. Thus freed, she lapsed into the spectator, flattening her nose against the shop-windows or drifting lazily from knot to knot of discussion.
All at once, when she was wandering from the thoroughfares among a tangle of silent, murky alleys, a child's scream brought her to an attentive halt. The cries redoubled. Without a thought of personal danger, she plunged recklessly down the alley in the direction of the appeals. Under the bulging shadow of a balcony a girl was struggling in the clutches of a mountebank, while, from a box on the ground, a monkey was adding its shrill chatter to the broil.