Inside the hall citizens crowded and jostled one another for a place; plump, respectable mothers of families, cheek by jowl with draggled wrecks of the slums, moneyed shopkeepers, tattered loafers, a wild-eyed Jacobin or two, and everywhere women, women, women. Women with their children, lifting a round-eyed starer high to see the white-faced aristocrat go past; women with their work, whose chattering tongues kept pace with the clattering needles; women fiercer and more cruel than men, to whom death and blood and anguish were become a stimulant more fatally potent than any alcohol.
There were men there too, gaping, yawning, telling horrible tales, men whose hands had dripped innocent blood in September. There was a reek of garlic, the air was abominably hot and close, and wherever citizens could get an elbow free one saw a mopping of greasy faces going forward.
As Mademoiselle de Rochambeau was brought in, a sort of growling murmur went round. The crowd was in a dangerous mood: on the verge of ennui, it wanted something fresh—a sauce piquante to its daily dish—and here was only another cursed aristocrat with nothing very remarkable about her.
She looked round, not curiously, but in some vague, helpless fashion, which might have struck pity from hearts less inured to suffering. On the raised stage to which they had brought her there were a couple of rough tables. At the nearest of the two sat a number of men, very dirty and evil-eyed—Fouquier Tinville's carefully packed jury; and at the farther one, Herman, the great tow-haired Judge President, with his heavy air of being half asleep; and Tinville himself, the Public Prosecutor, low-browed, with retreating chin—Renard the Fox, as a contemporary squib has it, the perpetrator of which lost his head for his pains. Behind him lounged Hébert, hands in pockets, light eyes roving here and there. She saw him and turned her head away with the wince of a trapped animal, looking through a haze of misery to the sea of faces below.
There is a peculiar effluence from any large body of people. Their encouragement, or their hostility, radiates from them, and has an overwhelming influence upon the mind. When the crowd cheers how quickly enthusiasm spreads, until, like a rising tide, it covers its myriad human grains of sand! And a multitude in anger?—No one who has heard it can forget!
Imagine, then, one bruised, tormented human speck, girl in years, gently nurtured, set high in face of a packed assemblage, every upturned face in which looked at her with appraising lust, bloodthirsty cruelty, or inhuman curiosity. A wild panic unknown before swept in upon her soul. She had not thought it could feel again, but between Hébert's glance, which struck her like a shameful blow, and all these eyes staring with hatred, her reason rocked, and she felt a scream rise shuddering from the very centre of her being.
Those watching saw both slender hands catch suddenly at the white throat, whilst for a minute the darkened eyes stared wildly round; then, with a supreme effort, she drew herself up, and stood quietly, and if the blood beat a mad tune on heart and brain, there was no outward sign, except a pallor more complete, and a tightening of the clasped, fallen hands that left the knuckles white.
It was thus, after months of absence, that Dangeau saw her again, and the rage and love and pity in his heart boiled up until it challenged his utmost self-control to keep his hands from Hébert's throat.
Hébert smiled, but uneasily. This was what he had planned—wished for—and yet— Face to face with Dangeau again, he felt the old desire to slink past, and get out of the range of the white, hot anger in the eyes that for a moment seemed to scorch his face.
Dangeau had come in quietly enough, and stood first at the edge of the crowd, by the steps which led to the raised platform on which accused and judges were placed. He had shot his bolt, had made a vain effort to see Danton, and was now come here to do he knew not what.