Below the figure of the Goddess of Reason had been placed a hastily constructed guillotine, which Boudgoust elevated and replaced, pouring over it a libation of red wine, announcing:
"The blood of aristocrats we offer thee!"
Then turning, he led the uproarious congregation, crouching below, in a litany:
"St. Guillotine, protector of patriots, pray for us.
St. Guillotine, terror of aristocrats, protect us.
Lovely machine, have pity on us.
Admirable machine, have pity on us.
St. Guillotine, deliver us of our enemies!"
"Pass on, pass on," Nicole cried, after the unavailing search.
"If it is not they, it is Javogues," thought Dossonville, who had been wondering whom she was seeking.
They left the chapels and emerged into the aisle, where no sound predominated and everything was heard; where it seemed that Hell, having overturned Heaven, was struggling to annihilate itself in the need of venting its wickedness.
For a moment Nicole forgot herself, aghast at the frenzy of her kind. She raised her eyes in terror to the deep vaults stretching upward undisturbed, serene and awful, as though from the dim regions, which in her childhood she had peopled with visions, the avenging thunderbolt was about to smite the scoffers.
On every side the shouts grew wilder. Vile women, dropping the mask of their sex, pursued men in long, haggard, furious lines over the artificial mounds that groaned under the chase. The half-naked figure of Cramoisin appeared, surrounded by bacchantes, exhorting the crowd to return to the primitive innocence. Forms meaningless and confused flitted, whirled, reeled before them in an unending danse Macabre, while mingled with the tempest came the ever-exultant shout:
"Vive la Raison! Vive la Raison!"