How the thief and his dog lived near to Paris in woods and fields, there is no need to tell in detail. The month of June was come in this year of 1793. Marat was ill, and Charlotte Corday on her way to forestall the decree of nature. La Vendée was up. The Girondists had fallen, the great cities of the South were in uproar, the enemy was on the frontier, and the rule of France in the competent and remorseless hands of the Committee of Public Safety. All around Paris the country was infested with wandering people who, for the most part, like François, had good reason to fear. There were beggars, thieves, persecuted nobles, those who had no mind to face the foe as volunteers. Now and then François, ever cautious, picked up a little news on a scrap of gazette found by the wayside. He read that Citizen Amar was of the Great Committee of General Security. François laughed.
"Toto, dost thou think this will add to thy master's security? That was the gentleman with the emigrative mouth. Ami, he is still alive. They must be tough, these Jacobins. What fun, Toto! I can see him pinned to the door like a beetle, and that marquis with a face, Toto, like a white plaster cast those Italians used to sell.
"I like not M. Amar. Toto, we are unhappy in our acquaintances. But the man of the wart is the worst." This was François's black beast; why, he could not have said. Amar, le farouche, was really a more fatal foe. The citizen who dressed neatly, and wore spectacles over green eyes, and was in debt to the conjurer for a not desirable forecast of fortune, was a yet more sinister acquaintance. Yet it was Citizen Grégoire who came to François in dreams, and the bare thought of whom could chop short a laugh as surely as Mother Guillotine, the merciless.
XVIII
Wherein is told how François reënters Paris, and lodges with the Crab; and of how Toto is near to death by the guillotine. François meets Despard and the marquis, who warns him and is warned.
A few days later, when lying behind a deserted hut at dusk, François heard a noise of military music, and ventured forth on the road leading to the barrier. Many hundreds of the wounded from the frontier were passing, in wagons or on foot. The communes and clubs were out to meet them. The cabarets outside of the gate poured forth a noisy company. The road was full. Who should stop the free citizens or the ladies of the fish-market, come to welcome patriot volunteers? Here was an escort of troops, wild, triumphant greeting of captured Austrian flags, many wounded in wagons, many more afoot, marching wearily. Those who walked the people must aid. The ranks were soon broken, and all was good-natured tumult. Here was help for heroes—wine, bread, eager aid of an arm. Some who were dragging along on crutches, to get a little relief from jolting wagons, were hoisted, to their discomfort, on the shoulders of friendly patriots not eager to volunteer.
François, tucking Toto under his cloak, edged himself into the broken ranks of the heroes of Hondschoote and Wattignies. "We are many," he said to a man beside him, as tattered as he, for there was scarcely a rag of uniform. "Jolly to get home again!"
"Sacré! not if they guillotined thy father a week ago."
"Dame! is that so? But patience, and hold thy tongue, citizen. Tonnerre! my leg." He was limping.
"Thy shoulder, friend"—to a blouse. "Tiens! that is better. The Austrian bullets have a liking for one's bones. Crack! crack! I can hear them yet. They do not spare the officers any more than they do the privates."