His surroundings would have surely and hopelessly degraded a less permanent character, and a nature without his ingrained gaiety would have taken more steadily some thought of the far future. He knew too well how the thief's life ended: the galleys, the wheel, the lonely death-bed in the hospital. If he reflected on it at all, as he seems to have done at this time, it was because of his long, weary days in the attic. The immediate future at this period did disturb him, but never long. He liked to talk, and, lacking society, talked more and more to himself aloud, with Toto for an audience which never ceased to attend. He who is pleased with his own talk cannot easily be bored; and so he talked, until Quatre Pattes, who loved keyholes and to listen, thought he must be out of his head. She herself was always either silent or boisterous, and was as to this like other beasts of prey. When in calamity François was too busy to be serious. When at ease the mirthfulness of his natural man forbade argument as to what the dice-box of to-morrow would offer; for to laugh is to hope, and François, as we know, laughed much, well, and often.
There were many times in his life when to have been honestly loved by a woman capable of comprehending both his strength and his weakness would, I think, have given him the chance to live a better life. But how was this possible to one who lived as he lived—who was what he was?
To be merely liked was pleasant to François, and appealed with the most subtle form of flattery to his immense self-esteem. The man was sensitive, and in after days, when in an atmosphere of refinement, would never speak of the terrible women he had known too well in the Cité. Having no longer the distraction of the streets, he was at present condemned to live long hours with no society but that of Toto and the animal Quatre Pattes. He bought a small field-glass, and studied the habits of his neighbors far and near, and once more took interest in the feline owners of the roof-tops. Quatre Pattes fed him well, and brought him some of the old gazettes.
He read how, on that frightful 5th of September, now past, one of the five complementary days of the republican calendar, on motion of Barrere, "Terror" was decreed by the Convention to be the order of the day. It was indeed the birth-hour of the Terror. The Great Committee was in power. The revolutionary tribunals were multiplied. The law of suspected persons was drawn with care by the great jurist Merlin of Douai. Behind these many man-traps was the Committee of Public Safety, with despotic power over the persons of all men, and in full control of the prisons. To it the subcommittees reported arrests; it secured the prisoners who were to be tried; it saw to the carrying out of all sentences; it kept the peace in Paris with an array of sansculottes, and fed the guillotine daily. Of this stern mechanism, strong of head and incapable of pity, was Pierre André Amar; as, one day, François read with his full share of the Terror. There was soon enough of it to supply all France.
Before November came, François, pretending to have been in luck, supplied the Crab with six louis. She exacted two more, and how much she kept none may know. He had very few left.
She was as good as her word. "Here, my little one, is the carte de sûreté from the committee of this section." The description was taken from his passport. He was no more to be François, but François Beau. If he would denounce one or two people, the committee would indorse his card as that of "a good patriot who deserved well of the country." There was the lame cobbler over the way, who talked loosely, and to whom the Crab owed money; that would be useful and convenient. François shivered all down his long back; he would see. Meanwhile, as he considered, Quatre Pattes twisted her bent spine, rattled her two sticks, and looked up at him sidewise with evil eyes, bidding him have a care, and not get his good mama into trouble, or else, or else—François felt that some night he might have to wring that wrinkled neck. He was uneasy, and with good reason.
He could bear the confinement no longer, and in December began to find his cash getting low. He had let his beard grow, and taken to long, tight pantaloons and a red cap. He felt that, come what might, he must take the risks of daylight.
The chances against him were small. The numberless denunciations of the winter fell chiefly on the rich, the rash in talk, the foes of the strong heads who were ably and mercilessly ruling France. The poor, the obscure, and the cautious bourgeoisie were as a rule safe until, in the spring, something like a homicidal mania took possession of Robespierre and others, who, although they were the most intelligent of the Great Committee, were never in control of a steady majority, and began to fear for their own heads.
Outwardly Paris was gay. The restaurateurs made money; the people were fed by levies of grain on the farmers; and the tumbrel, on its hideous way, rarely excited much attention. The autumn and winter of '93 were not without peril or adventure for the thief. The Palais d'Égalité, once royal, was his favored resort, and with his well-trained sleight of hand he managed to justify the name of the place by efforts to equalize the distribution of what money was left to his own advantage and to the satisfaction of the Crab.
The dark drama went on; but, except the tricoteuses who, like Quatre Pattes, went daily to see the guillotine at work, comparatively few attended this daily spectacle. Paris, wearied of crime and too much politics, was tired of the monotony of slaughter, which had now no shadow of excuse.