"Louison? She's a comrade. You will see her." She stopped. "We are good friends, only I—well—I don't know." Nicole, who conversed abundantly with her shoulders, raised them again. "When you're rich you can choose; but with us, we take what's nearest. We must have some one to gossip with, to weep with, to laugh with, to confide a little in, and so we take what we can get. That's how it is." Suddenly she halted suspiciously. "Are you a patriot?" she asked point-blank.
"You'd have thought so last night." Barabant, remembering the drubbing he had escaped the night before, grinned and nodded. At his description of the café Nicole showed great interest.
"You said that, and escaped with your life from that den of aristocrats!" she exclaimed, in horror, for she had the popular idea that aristocrats were ogres and inhuman monsters. At the first words descriptive of his rescue she cried:
"Dossonville; beyond a doubt, Dossonville!"
"What, do you know him?" said Barabant. "Who and what is he?"
"Now you have asked me a question. What is Dossonville?" Suddenly she became serious. "He is a mystery to me and to more than me. Frankly, I do not know his party, and don't believe any one else does. He is here and there, with the patriots one moment and the court the next; but whether he is acting for one side or for neither, no one knows. And he rescued you!" She meditated a moment. "That sounds like a patriot; but then, what was he doing in such a place?"
The crowd became more boisterous as the wine-jugs grew lighter; seeing which, Nicole rose and made a sign to him to follow. In the front room she stopped before a vat on which, his huge body astride, Santerre was bandying jests with the crowd. Nicole, approaching, whispered:
"Is it for to-night?"
The brewer affected not to understand her.
"Look here, my big fellow," she said, with the familiarity of the day, "do you want me to cry it from the housetops? Will you understand me now?"